


Acts of Contrition

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fullmetal Alchemist 2003/Brotherhood Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Genocide, Ishbal | Ishval, Mental Health Issues, NaNoWriMo, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 64,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: “You’re so quiet,” she accuses. “Something’s on your mind.”He shrugs. “Edward Elric,” he finally admits. He takes another sip of the whiskey, appreciating the burn as it slides down his throat.Riza frowns, twisting around so she can look into his face. “The kid?”“Youngest State Alchemist in history. And I’m throwing him into the meat grinder.”“This isn’t Ishval,” Riza points out, very softly.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell, Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 59
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

Mustang brings his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and pinches. And breathes. In. Out. He opens his eyes.  
  
The idea does not seem any more like a good one with his eyes open.  
  
The kid – because that's what he is, a _kid_ – stands in front of him. He's _twelve._ This is not his fight.  
  
Still, what did he expect? He was sent to Resembool to recruit and that's exactly what he did and now he's stuck with this mess.  
  
Edward Elric looks up at him with bright eyes and a completely fearless expression – and all you have to do is look at him and it's obvious that he doesn't have anything left to fear – and he smiles, and it's full of pre-adolescent cockiness, but it is, also, genuine. And something stirs inside of Mustang, because no one he knows smiles like that anymore. Hughes, sometimes, when he's talking about his wife and his newly-born daughter, but the shadows of Ishval still haunt them, even when they're smiling.  
  
There's darkness in Ed's eyes too, but it comes and goes. It flickers in for just for a brief moment as Ed sets his shoulders and looks up at Roy and says “I passed your test. So I guess that means I'm a State Alchemist, right?”  
  
“There's more to it than that,” Mustang tries to tell him, but he doesn't have the heart to explain what he really means. And anyway, maybe he's wrong. After all, they aren't at war anymore.  
  
“I don't care if I have to become a dog of the military or whatever,” Edward snaps, with all the belligerence that only a child – _this_ child in particular – can summon.  
  
He wants to be an alchemist. Well no, he _is_ an alchemist, a prodigy, stronger than anyone's ever heard of at that age, and probably stronger than most of them are now. He wants to be a _State_ Alchemist, and that's a different thing altogether. Only in Amestris would the most powerful people have the least power.  
  
Mustang sighs heavily. Flame flickers behind his eyes. “You don't know what you're asking, kid.”  
  
“I don't _care_!” Ed is screaming, loudly enough that Mustang actually flinches. “I _have_ to get Al's body back! I'll do anything.”

Mustang shakes his head, trying to protest. People always say they'll do anything. They never mean it. Except he looks at Edward Elric, and somehow he knows that this boy does. And it scares the ever-living crap out of him.  
  
“I passed the _test,”_ Ed insists.  
  
“This isn't about the test,” Roy says weakly.  
  
“This was your idea. You came to me.”  
  
“I know. And I was wrong.”  
  
Mustang hears the clank of metal, the walking armor that is Edward's younger brother, shifting, moving closer so he can rest a hand on Ed's shoulder. “He didn't think we would pass the test, brother.”  
  
Edward grinds his teeth. “Is that true?”  
  
He looks at Mustang with an unblinking stare that's downright unsettling. Roy's the soldier here. The kid is... just a kid. “It's more like I was hoping you wouldn't pass.”  
  
“ _Why?”  
  
_ “Because you're a _child_. And I wanted you to be able to be a child.”  
  
The armor stiffens, straightens up. Pink eyes glow dimly from inside the helmet. Roy tries not to be disturbed. “You're wrong,” Al says, a child's voice distorted and metallic. “We're not children anymore.”  
  
“Al's right,” Edward says. And there it is again, the darkness. “We stopped being children when... when...” His eyes flick over to the looming set of armor. He can’t summon the words to describe the _when_. When they turned into something less than human, maybe? Yeah. They are not children anymore.   
  
“We stopped being children when we lost our mother,” Al says harshly, and Ed nods. Because that’s the core of it.   
  
Roy’s stomach twists. He knows about loss – knows more than he wants to about sacrifice, and he thinks that he and the Elric brothers both understand that alchemy is not about Equal Exchange – alchemy only takes – but even still, he has no hope of comprehending what these children have lost. Human transmutation. Roy recoils from just the thought.  
  
These children broke the most fundamental law of the land, probably the only remaining law Roy hasn’t seen bent until it shattered and disappeared. There’s no bending on human transmutation. No one sees the face of God and lives.   
  
Except… Ed and Al are - arguably, probably, _definitely_ \- alive. He’s seen enough death, he should know. They’re twisted and damaged, and more than just physically, but they’re standing in front of him just like any other soldiers (he’s already thinking of them as soldiers. Fuck). And they’re right. They aren’t children, they’re apostates. You can’t be both.  
  
He sighs.   
  
“Lieutenant Colonel?” Edward asks, tentatively. “I _am_ a State Alchemist, right?”   
  
“Yeah,” Mustang says. “You are. It’s not something I can take away.” He pats his desk without looking at it, fumbling for the rounded shape of a pocketwatch that fits perfectly in his hand. He tosses it at Ed, and the boy catches it without trouble. Roy swallows the guilt as Ed smiles, and slips it into the pocket of his red trenchcoat. “Congrats, dog of the military.”

Ed doesn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. Or else it just doesn’t matter to him.   
  
“Dismissed,” Roy tells him. Ed turns to go, and Al too moves toward the door, slow and clanking.  
  
Al actually turns to look back at him before leaving the room, but Roy pretends not to notice. He’s already picked up a stack of paperwork - so _much_ paperwork, always.  
  
He can hear the armor clanking all the way down the hall.


	2. Chapter 2

“Roy?”   
  
Mustang’s head snaps up. No one would call him by his first name, not here at Headquarters, except for one person. And even she will only do it late at night, when no one else is around. He smiles, glad to see her silhouette standing in the doorway. “Riza.”  
  
She steps into the room, eyes narrowing as they take in the absolute mess of his desk. Papers everywhere in haphazard piles, spilled ink he hasn’t bothered to clean up. She rubs her sleeve over the worst of it, until Roy grabs her wrist. “That’s gotta be against some sort of regulation, don’t you think?”  
  
She shrugs. “Military doesn’t seem to care when it’s blood the uniform is stained with.”  
  
Mustang sighs. “I’m supposed to be the bitter one, between the two of us.”  
  
Riza looks had him - looks _through_ him, it almost feels like. “You look tired, Roy,” she says softly. He nods, before it occurs to him that he is not supposed to admit to being tired. It’s _Riza_. She’s seen him break before, and she will again. He squeezes her hand, then rubs his gritty eyes. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”  
  
“I need to finish these reports.”  
  
“They’ll still be here in the morning.”  
  
“They’re always here in the morning,” he murmurs. He never feels like he accomplishes anything, just pushing papers around. But that’s so much better than the alternative. He glances up at Riza. “I could use a drink,” he admits, as he stands up, ignoring the protest of stiff muscles.  
  
Riza frowns at him, but nods. One drink, just to help them both to sleep. One drink is not so bad.  
  
“Are you driving?” she asks, and Roy shrugs. “I can drive.” One drink will turn into a bottle, she knows. One of them has to stay sober.  
  
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Roy insists.  
  
Riza stands up on tiptoe so she can brush her lips against his. “Good thing I’m not a babysitter.” (She is, she thinks, technically a babysitter. Adjutant. They mean they same thing, though, especially with Roy).  
  
He nods, and squeezes her hand once more. “Thanks, Ri.”  
  
He’s staring out the window of the car, eyes unfocused, watching beads of water roll down the glass. Contrary to what most people expect, he doesn’t hate the rain. It never rained in Ishval. These days, it’s the sun that he can’t stand.  
  
Lost in his own melancholy thoughts, it takes him longer than it should to realize that they’re not heading for any bar that knows about, and he’d like to think he knows about them all. “We’re going to your place?” he asks, surprised. Despite their relationship, Roy can count on one hand the number of times he’s been to Riza’s apartment.  
  
“I don’t really feel like staying out, do you?”  
  
“No,” Roy says, and he shakes his head.  
  
The rest of the drive is quiet.

The rain is a soft drizzle, not enough to get wet unless they were standing out in it. Even still, Riza runs up the short flight of stairs to her front door. “Come on, come in,” she insists, pulling Roy over the threshold. He follows her, but stops just inside the door.  
  
Riza’s apartment is very clean and well-organized. Color-coordinated decor. Fresh flowers in translucent green vases. Nothing out of place.

“Sit down,” Riza orders. “I’ll get the glasses.”

Roy nods, and begins making his way over to the couch. He’s only gone a step or two when a rambunctious puppy barrels into his legs.

“Hayate, leave Roy alone!” Riza snaps from the kitchen. The dog whines.

Roy smiles. “It’s okay,” he calls to Riza, and he reaches down to scratch Black Hayate between the ears.

Riza comes into the living room, holding a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. She sets them down on a small table near the sofa. “You’re going to spoil him,” she warns. Roy shrugs. He continues petting the puppy. The dog follows on his heels as he heads over to the couch and pours the drinks. He hands one of the glasses to Riza as she sits down next to him. She curls up against his side, sipping slowly, and Roy puts his arm around her. He picks up his glass with his other hand, and drinks, far more slowly than he would were he alone. Black Hayate yawns, and sprawls out on the rug a few feet away.

Riza takes another sip of her drink and looks up at Roy. “You’re so quiet,” she accuses. “Something’s on your mind.”

He shrugs.

“Edward Elric,” he finally admits. He takes another sip of the whiskey, appreciating the burn as it slides down his throat.

Riza frowns, twisting around so she can look into his face. “The kid?”

“Youngest State Alchemist in history. And I’m throwing him into the meat grinder.”

“This isn’t Ishval,” Riza points out, very softly. Roy downs the rest of his drink and doesn’t reply.

* * *

Sunlight spills over him, and he shifts in his sleep, rolling over, his eyes fluttering open. Barely catching himself as he starts to fall. Or maybe not catching himself. He ends up tumbling off Riza’s couch and nearly cracking his head on the coffee table.

Across the room, Hayate stirs and barks.

“Shut up!” Riza yells from the other room, and the dog quiets. Roy smiles.

He runs his tongue over his teeth. His mouth tastes like something died inside it. The whiskey bottle on the table rests on its side, open. Empty. This shouldn’t surprise him, but somehow it does. He gets to his feet, and heads toward the kitchen. It doesn’t take much effort to find a glass, in Riza’s well-organized home. He sticks it into the sink and fills it with water, then does the best he can to rinse out his mouth.

He looks up when he sees Riza coming into the room. She’s already dressed in uniform, hair up in its customary tail, stiff and alert and… properly military, Roy thinks. He scowls.

“You look a mess, Roy,” Riza accuses. He nods. “You have the morning briefing at 0700.”

“What time is it now?”

“You have about an hour. Grab a shower. I’ll make coffee.” He nods, but doesn’t move. Riza comes over to him, takes his glass, sets it on the counter. “First door on the right, towels on the shelf, you’ll see them.” She kisses him, more fiercely than Roy would have anticipated. He feels the heat of it in his belly. “Get going, Roy. You don’t have all day.”

* * *

An hour later, he’s back at Headquarters, watching out of the corner of his eye as Riza rolls her eyes at Lieutenant Havoc, who has his feet up on the desk while he reads a newspaper.

Roy heads past them, toward the large room at the back of the building that serves as their command center. Brigadier General Basque Grand is waiting for him. “Ah. Lieutenant Colonel Mustang.”

Roy snaps a salute. The General nods his acknowledgement and then waves him into the room. Roy enters. In addition to the General, most of the Investigations Division is scattered about the room, some with coffee mugs in their hands and others with cigarettes dangling from between their teeth. Roy takes a few steps closer to the large table in the middle of the room, where a map of Central City is rolled out and held down with heavy paperweights.

A new splash of red marks the map. “There was another one?” Roy asks, frowning.

“Only an hour ago,” Maes Hughes confirms.

“Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?”

Roy presses the heel of his hand to his forehead and takes a sharp breath. “Yeah. I’m here now. Have you found anything?”

“No. But we’re heading out to the scene.”

Roy nods, and starts following Hughes out of the room, mind already running a thousand miles a minute. Five women dead, killed and left to rot in the alleys of Central. _Why_? He stops just before he crosses the threshold of the door, remembering suddenly that this _was_ supposed to be a briefing. “General? Do I have your permission-”

“Go on, Lieutenant Colonel,” General Basque Grand replies curtly. He almost always sounds like everyone who works under him is an annoyance. But he’s powerful, in more ways than one, so Roy follows his orders. Thankfully, at the moment, his orders actually line up with what Roy wants to do anyway. He breathes a quiet sigh of relief, and slips out of the room.

Hughes is waiting for him in the hall. “You look like hell, Mustang.”

“Yeah. Well. Someone was just murdered.”

“You looked like hell before you found out about that.”

“I’m fine. Come on. Let’s get going.” He pushes past Hughes and starts heading down the hall toward Central Command’s intimidatingly large main entrance. He can hear Hughes hurrying to follow. He slows down just a bit, to allow his friend to catch up.

They spill out onto the stone steps just outside the building, and Roy squints against the light.

“Lieutenant Colonel! Lieutenant Colonel Mustang! Hey!” Edward Elric runs up the steps, followed, more slowly, but the clanking armor of his brother, Al.

Mustang sighs. “What are you doing here, kid?”

Hughes steps up behind him. “Is this the kid everybody’s talking about?” he asks. “The twelve-year-old Alchemist? Are we supposed to take him with us?”

“You want to take a twelve-year-old to the scene of a murder?”

Hughes shrugs. “He’s in the military now, isn’t he? What good will he be if he’s afraid of a little blood?”

Mustang grinds his teeth, but nods his permission.

They ride down the streets in a jeep, Ed and Al in the back, with the fabric covering removed so that the giant suit of armor can fit.

Up front, Hughes drives, while Mustang sits in the passenger seat, craning his neck out the window as if that might bring him closer to finding the killer they’re hunting.

“So, he’s under your command now, eh?” Hughes asks. Mustang turns to look at the brothers riding in the back of the jeep. Ed is chattering to Al, although Mustang can’t hear what he’s saying. He shrugs, and turns back to Hughes.

“I recruited him.”

“Right. I suppose we both know it’s not up to you where he’s assigned.”

Mustang clenches and unclenches a fist. This should not be what he’s worried about right now. They’re supposed to be investigating a crime. He glances toward the back of the jeep. “He’s good, Hughes. He’s too good.”

“Good at alchemy? Or just… good?”

“Both. You can’t be both.”

Hughes nods his understanding. He’s not an alchemist, but he was there in Ishval. He reaches over to give Roy’s hand a squeeze, and is shocked when the other man allows it. “Take care of yourself, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“I can do the job, Hughes.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

Roy turns away from Hughes, glances out the window. The other man is already pulling the jeep to a stop, in front of a narrow alleyway between a grocery store and a barber shop. The alley is darkened by the shade of the buildings looming to either side of it, and Roy is all too happy to step into that shadow. At the end of the alley, under a sheet, is a body.

Roy stops, closes his eyes, clenches his fists. There were so many bodies in Ishval. The Amestrian Military, under sheets, tagged and numbered. The Ishvalan civilians left where they fell, at least until he burned them, to stop the spread of disease. He relished the cleanup duty. At least when they were already dead, he didn’t have to hear them screaming.

“Roy,” Hughes says softly. The other man’s hand is on his shoulder. Mustang breathes out, slowly.

“What do we know?” he asks Hughes, all clipped professionalism.

His friend shrugs. “Not much. She seems to have been killed in the same manner as the others.”

“Axe?”

“Or cleaver, yes. A large chopping weapon, at any rate. She would have bled out quickly.” Roy nods. That part, at least, is a relief. “She had a daughter,” Hughes adds. “The civilian police found her sitting next to the body. Took her…” he shrugs. “I dunno. Took her away from here, anyway.”

“Do you think she saw what happened?”

“I suppose we’ll have to ask.” It looks like the idea gives him no comfort. Roy knows that Hughes’ wife just had a baby girl. He’s probably thinking of her.

“Don’t worry, Hughes. I’ll be gentle.”

Hughes and Mustang both spin around at the sound of a strangled gasp. Edward Elric has sunk to hands and knees in the middle of the alley. He is shaking uncontrollably, choking out something that sounds like “Mom!” over and over.

The heavy armor that is Al clanks up behind him. Ed flinches away. “Brother?” the armor asks, echoing and sad.

Mustang turns back, toward the end of the alley, where a sudden gust of wind has blown away the sheet that was covering the body. Its dead-eyed face stares up at nothing, its blood still soaks the cobblestones.

“Help!” the metallically distorted child’s voice of Alphonse Elric calls. “Lieutenant Colonel Mustang! Major Hughes! Please, you have to help him!”

Hughes runs to Edward first, gently picks the boy up in his arms.

Mustang frowns. “Is he…?”

Hughes shrugs. “Seems like he’s asleep.” Ed stirs and mutters. His eyes never open. Al watches silently, with unnatural eyes glowing pink in the darkness. “Come on, let’s get him somewhere safe. We’ve found all we’re going to find here, anyway. The coroner will come for the body, soon.”

“Let’s take him to my place,” Roy suggests. It’s certainly a better idea than bringing him to the barracks of Central Command.

Hughes sits in the back of the jeep with Al, still holding Ed in his arms. Roy lives in a small apartment near headquarters, and there are plenty of soldiers in military uniform on the streets. But no one seems to pay them much attention, and they are grateful.

“Lay him down here,” Roy says, flicking on the light in his bedroom and doing the best he can to sweep the worst of the mess away, dirty laundry into corners, empty bottles and glasses wherever he can find the space. Hughes says nothing. But Hughes has seen it all, anyway. He puts Ed down on the bed, and the boy murmurs something unintelligible before rolling onto his stomach and beginning to snore softly. Roy shoots Hughes a quizzical glance. Hughes shrugs. He’s no expert in mental trauma, at least not of this magnitude, but… well. He was in Ishval.

“I’ll stay with him,” Roy says.

Hughes nods. 

“He’ll be okay, won’t he, sir?” the armor asks, as Hughes returns to Mustang’s living room.

Hughes turns to Al, distracted by thoughts of the crime scene. Was it something particular about _that_ body that caused Edward to react, or would it have happened with any corpse?

“Sir?”

“What? Oh. Yes. I’m sure he will be.”

“What happened?”

“Shock, I think. It seems like he was reliving a particularly terrifying moment. Sometimes, a strong memory like that, it can overwhelm a man. Paralyze him. It happens to soldiers sometimes.”

(A fighting dog who refuses to fight is worse than useless. It’s _dangerous_. And dangerous dogs get a bullet between the eyes. He was in Ishval).

“Oh.” Al shifts a bit, rests armored hands on armored knees. “Does it happen to you?”

Hughes tilts his head back in an attempt to look into the glowing pink eyes of the suit of armor. Somehow, for a conversation like this, it feels right that they be at the same level.

“I’ve never fainted, if that’s what you’re asking. But…” he shifts, reaching up to massage the stiff muscles in his shoulders. He rolls his arm. “There are bad nights,” he admits. “I think there are for all of us.”

Hughes shakes his head, quickly. There’s no sense scaring the kid. “Edward is lucky to have a brother like you looking after him.”

“I’ll never let anything bad happen to him,” Al promises. Hughes smiles at the boy’s earnestness. He heads into Roy’s kitchen, grabbing two bottles of beer from the box in the corner.

Then, he heads back to the bedroom, hovering quietly in the doorway for a moment.

Roy sits in a chair next to the bed, watching uncomfortably as Ed sleeps. He shifts and squirms, occasionally battering a fist against the mattress, his breathing rough and ragged. But his eyes never open, and he always eventually settles down. In those peaceful interludes, he looks like a child, more so than at any point since Roy first met him. A child having a nightmare that won’t fade away when he wakes up.

“Roy?” Hughes asks.

Mustang turns around. “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asks.

Hughes slowly shakes his head, his brow furrowing with worry. The frown on his face is deep enough to drown in. Roy bows his head, closes his eyes. He never used to believe in ghosts either. But…

“I can’t stop seeing them,” he admits.

“Seeing who, Roy?”

“The children of Ishval.”

Hughes sighes, and Roy can see the familiar haunted darkness in his eyes. “I think about it all the time too, you know. But… Ishval was years ago.” Roy nods, not looking at all convinced. Ever since he was sent to Resembool, his nightmares have been getting worse, not better. He stares down at his hand, wrapped up in a white ignition glove. There’s no escaping what he’s done when he wears the evidence of his crime every single day. Hughes places a hand on his shoulder. Roy tries not to flinch. “Listen, why don’t you come over to my place? Gracia would love to see you. You can meet the baby.”

Roy takes a breath. The ghosts are his constant companions, but he shakes his head to clear it, and smiles at Hughes. Weakly, but he does smile. “I’d like that,” he says.

“Have I shown you the pictures? I think I have some new ones.” Hughes starts fishing around in his pocket for his wallet, nearly dropping the bottles of beer he’s still holding in his haste to get to it. Roy takes the bottles, popping the top off one while Hughes finally finds the pictures he was looking for. “There, you see. She looks just like me!”

“She looks like an infant, Hughes. What is she, two days old?”

“Three.”

Roy takes a long sip of his beer, and hands Hughes the other bottle. “She looks… sweet.”

“I know!” Hughes begins to gush, and Roy is so happy to see his friend happy that it almost takes some of the weight off his shoulders. He’s been so wrapped up in this case. Between that and the anniversary of the war, he can’t remember the last time he had a good night’s sleep.

He turns at the sound of Edward thrashing around in the bed again. Speaking of sleep. This time, the boy’s eyes are open, and he scrambles to sit up.

“You’re awake,” Hughes announces needlessly.

“What happened? Where am I?”

“Relax,” Roy says, in what he hopes is a calming tone. “You’re safe. Do you.... What do you remember?”

Edward frowns as he concentrates, staring down at his automail arm as if it could somehow help him focus. Then, he looks up at Roy, eyes wide. “We were at the crime scene.”

Roy nods. “And?”

“And. And there was… that woman. The dead woman.”

“You were screaming in your sleep,” Roy says gently. “Calling for your mother.”

“I’m fine now,” Ed mutters, but he won’t meet Roy’s eyes. But Roy just shrugs. If the kid wants to pretend to be fine, who is he to argue?

“Suit yourself,” he says, standing up and taking another long pull from his beer bottle. “We’ve got to get back to headquarters. Get dressed.”

Hughes frowns, but he too says nothing as they leave the room. Ed follows a minute later, slipping his coat sleeve over his arm and pulling on his boots.  
  
“Brother!” Al exclaims.

Ed smiles. “I’m fine, Al. Really, I am. It was just a bad dream.” Roy thinks it sounds a little more believable this time.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get going.”


	3. Chapter 3

Ed frowns. “You want _me_ to interrogate the little girl?”

“I want you to _talk_ to her,” Roy says. “She might listen to you. You’re young. Not so scary.”

Al, clanking as he moves, puts a reassuring hand on Ed’s shoulder. And peers down at Roy, with his pink eyes. “I can talk to her.”

Ed nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Little kids like Al.”

But Roy just rolls his eyes. “Even if I thought it was a good idea to send a talking suit of armor into the room of a traumatized child, anything she gives you in there is information that will be classified. Military only.”

“Oh,” Al says, sounding dejected. “I… guess that’s alright, then.” He takes his hand off Ed’s shoulder and starts walking down the hall.

“Al, wait!” Ed calls, but Roy shakes his head.

“Military only, Major Elric,” Roy says, somehow managing to use the twelve-year-old’s military rank with only a trace of irony. For a while, he still isn’t sure Ed will go for it. Roy could order him to. But finally, the boy nods. “Fine. I’ll talk to her.”

Roy watches through the one-way glass as Ed slips into the interrogation room. It’s not a place for children, all cold steel and bright lights. The little girl is sitting in a metal chair bolted to the floor on one side of a metal table. There is another chair across from her, but Ed ignores it.

“Hello,” he says softly. The little girl looks up. Her eyes are deep brown, her hair is highlighted red under the bright fluorescents buzzing overhead. She shrinks away as Edward gets closer. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her knees, and she is noticeably trembling. Has she been here, in this room, for all this time, since they left the crime scene that morning? She must be hungry, and scared.

Ed sits down on the table near her, clutching the metal with his automail hand. The girl’s eyes widen. He smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. He’s not good with kids, never has been, not even when he was one. “My name’s Ed. What’s yours?”

“Frizia.” She blinks back tears, and Edward can see the streaks on her face from where she wasn’t trying to stop herself from crying. “My mom’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Y-yeah,” Ed says shakily. “I…” he hangs his head. He can still see the image of the dead body in the alleyway. He can still see other images, worse than that. He tightens his grip on the table. He won’t lose it again. He _won’t_. If he could survive losing - well, losing _everything_ \- than he can’t afford to let the memory of it paralyze him for too long. He has a job to do. He has to find the Philosopher’s Stone. He has to get Al’s body back.

(On the other side of the glass, Roy holds his breath.)

“Mister?” the little girl asks. “Mister, are you okay?”

He blinks. Looks up. Looks at Frizia and tries to smile. “I was just thinking about my mom,” he says. “She died, too.”

“Oh. Did someone cut her with a big knife?”

“What? No, she was sick. But Frizia, did you see what happened?”

“I wasn’t supposed to see,” she whispers. “I was hiding.”

“ _Did you see_?” Ed repeats, and his voice is harsh and desperate, and Frizia cringes. She shakes her head, and her tears start to fall again. ( _Brother!_ Al says, in his head, a conscience even when he isn’t actually in the room).

“There was a man,” Frizia says.

“What did he look like?” Ed asks. “What did he _sound_ like?”

But Frizia just shrugs. Arms around knees, looking straight ahead. Still shaking slightly.

“Elric,” Roy says, his voice crackling through a radio embedded in the ceiling. “I think that’s enough for now.”

Ed just sits there. Roy is just about to repeat his order - this time actually phrasing it as an order - when the boy stands up abruptly and crosses the three steps to the door of the cell. He slams it shut behind him.

“Damn it!” Ed slams his automail fist into the wall. “She doesn’t know anything,” he hisses. “Not anything we can use.”

“You don’t know that,” Roy says calmly. “And you’re taking this rather personally, don’t you think?”

Ed draws in a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I mean, this isn’t even my job, is it? It’s you who has to find the killer.”

“Right.” Roy pushes his way past Ed and heads into the interview room. Frizia looks up, tracks his movement with wide, unblinking eyes.

“Who’re you?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Mustang.” He pulls a piece of paper and a pen from the satchel he’s carrying and sets it down on the table in front of the girl. “I wonder if you can draw me a picture. Can you show me what the man looks like?”

The girl looks down at the pen in her hand. She starts to draw, sticking out her tongue a little as she concentrates. Roy waits patiently. But when she slides the finished product over to him, he’s forced to realize it’s just a child’s drawing, too generic to actually be of any use.

He forces a smile anyway. “Thank you very much, Frizia. This will be very helpful. Come on,” he says, reaching for her hand. “Are you hungry?”

She looks up at him. She doesn’t move. Roy sighs. He leaves her alone and then summons Lieutenant Havoc to get the girl some food and bring her to the city’s orphanage.

The ghosts of Ishval scream in his head.

* * *

Ed is loitering at the end of the hall, talking to his brother. Roy can see them. But he leaves them alone and heads the other way, toward the office where Hughes and the rest of the Investigations Unit works.

“You get anything off the body?” he asks, as he enters the room. Almost the whole Investigations Unit stops what they’re doing to salute him. He nods in return, indicating without having to say a word that they can relax and return to their business. He heads over to the far end of the table, where Hughes stands studying the map. He holds a fairly thick stack of papers in his hand.

“Old coroner’s reports,” Hughes says, looking up at Roy. “From the other victims. They’ll have the newest autopsy done tomorrow.”

Roy nods his understanding. They already know the cause of death, anyway. It’s other things they’re looking for. Clues. “Is there anything that ties these women together?”  
  
“Not any more than there was the last three times you asked. It’s just _random_.” Hughes spits, clearly frustrated.

“Nothing is random,” Roy says softly.   
  
“Not everyone is an alchemist.”

Roy takes in a deep breath and blows it through his nose. Stares down at the splashes of blood-red marking the map. The blood in the alley was darker, older. Fresh blood is bright. He wishes he didn’t know that. “I suppose we can be thankful for small favors,” he says. “At least they’re not killing with alchemy.”

Hughes shrugs. “Be easier to catch them if they were.”

“You can’t think-”  
  
“Relax.” Hughes holds up his hands in surrender. “You’re right. It’s a good thing they’re not killing with alchemy.” But they’re still killing. Five bodies in as many weeks. And they’re no closer to finding whoever is doing it. “There is this. The coroner seems to think that the killer is moving the bodies from the place where they were killed. Placing them in an alley that is far from the original scene of the crime.”

“Why?” Mustang asks, at the same time as Hughes worries at the question, _How_?

“Who can tell anything about why a murderer does what he does? But we’ve got civilian police looking into the trunks of every car going in or out of Central, and they’ve turned up nothing.”

“You think they’ve got a car that can hide a body?” Roy asks, in utter disbelief.

“I think whatever they’re doing, they’re way ahead of us.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Mustang.” Roy knows the voice even before he looks up. He snaps to attention, bringing his hand up in a crisp salute.

“Fuhrer!”

“At ease, Lieutenant Colonel. The Fuhrer is actually _smiling_. “Do you know, I overheard the most fascinating conversation just now, between young Elric and his brother? It seems they are attempting to locate a Philosopher’s Stone.”

“I thought those were a myth,” Roy says quietly.

“Come now, Lieutenant Colonel. We both know that’s not true.”

(They called them “alchemic augmentation agents” during the war. A technical name to make it less obvious what they were capable of? A bland name like that could make anything seem harmless. A little red stone, cupped in his hand. And with it, he set the world on fire.)

He stares directly ahead, at a point just over the Fuhrer’s left shoulder. “What do you need, sir?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I’m just here to look in on the investigation. Have you found any new leads?”

“No,” Roy says, at the same time as Hughes says, “Yes.” Roy spins around, raising a questioning eyebrow.

Hughes clears his throat. He salutes the Fuhrer as he talks. “We know that the killer is moving the bodies. That means we know to look for a way he could be moving them.”

The Fuhrer nods. “I see. Well, I am certain you’ll apprehend the culprit soon enough.” He turns to Roy. “Flame Alchemist. Will you be sure to give this to your new protege?” He holds out an ordinary yellow envelope.

Roy takes it and nods. “I’ll do that, sir.”

“Very good.”

“What do you think that was about?” Roy asks Hughes quietly, as soon as the Fuhrer has left the room. “He couldn’t have really been here just to check on the investigation.”

Hughes just shrugs. “Ours is not to reason why, Mustang. You know that.”


	4. Chapter 4

“What’s this?” Ed asks, as he shovels rice into his mouth with a set of chopsticks, so quickly that Roy wonders how he hasn’t choked. Roy has settled into the chair across from him at the mess hall table, and set the envelope down between them.

“It’s from the Fuhrer.”

At that, Ed actually stops eating. He snatches up the envelope. “Seriously?” He slides his automail finger under the flap of the envelope, prying it open. Then, he unfolds the letter inside. “We give the name “Fullmetal” to thee, Edward Elric…” he murmurs as he reads. Then he looks up. “Fullmetal?”

Roy shrugs. “State Alchemists get a silver watch and a second name. That’s yours. Just… don’t let it turn you into something less than human, okay, kid?”

“I like it,” Ed insists. He doesn’t seem overly troubled by the warning. “It sounds badass.”

Roy cracks a smile. He has to admit it does, a little. Ed finishes his meal while Roy looks on. “Hey, boss,” he says, setting down his empty bowl. “You’re still going to let me help you track down this serial killer, right? You know I didn’t mean to pass out or anything.”

“I’ll send you to Hughes in the morning. He probably needs help with data analysis.”

Ed’s face falls. “Data analysis?”

“Surely you understand that it’s one of the most important parts of alchemy. Understanding the theory in order to refine the practice. It’s no different for stopping a criminal.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Roy stands up, and claps Ed on the shoulder. “You’re going to spend a lot of time doing things you don’t like in the military. Might as well get used to it now.”

“Right,” Ed mutters. “Come on, Al!” he calls out, to the nearly empty cafeteria. The suit of armor emerges from behind an ice cream freezer. “What were you doing there?”

“I was just looking, brother.”

“Well, come on.”

“Okay!”

Roy watches the two brothers go. He spends the whole night in his office, catching up on paperwork and downing cup after cup of coffee so that he doesn’t have to sleep.

He stands up only when the younger soldiers start filtering into the common office outside his own. He stops by the bathroom to splash some water on his face, and then decides to go to the library, to do some research there. He could use the change of scenery.

He’s grateful Riza isn’t around. He doesn’t need another lecture about how he isn’t taking proper care of himself. 

It’s another bright, sunny day when he steps outside. A refrigerated truck stands directly in front of the Central Command, presumably here to unload food for the canteen. But Roy doesn’t see anyone around to unload it. He shrugs, figuring it’s not his problem, and turns left past the truck so he can make his way to the library. He’s walked only a block or so, sticking to the shaded sidewalk, when he is overcome by the overwhelming feeling that he is being watched.  
  
“Who’s there?” he calls out.

No one answers. Roy calls a flame to his hand.

He thinks he hears something moving in the shadows of the alley, and he launches his fireball in that direction. It explodes against a fire escape. Nothing attacks.

Roy takes a calming breath, then another. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and keeps walking. He can’t keep jumping at shadows like this. He has a job to do.

His head feels a little bit clearer by the time he’s arrived at the library. He climbs the stone steps and disappears into the stacks, eventually finding a stack of books and carrying them to a table.

“I see you are researching the Philosopher’s Stone,” a woman’s voice says, after he’s been sitting there for more than an hour.

Roy jumps. He has fire in his hand before he thinks about it, and the librarian standing before him looks visibly panicked. He quenches the flame. “Sorry,” he mutters, stuffing his hand back into his pocket. “Anyway, I can’t find any truly useful information. It’s all just guesses and rumors.”

The librarian shrugs. “I suppose if anyone in the military had learned how to make one, it would have been done by now.”

Roy nods. “But what about the stones we used in the war? Those _were_ Philosopher’s Stones, weren’t they?”

“I didn’t fight in the war, sir.”

“Right. Still…” He opens and closes his hand, as if he could somehow call one of those stones into being, right here.

“The Philosopher’s Stone would be a dangerous thing, even if you could create one. Don’t you agree?”

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” He stands up, scrubbing his face with his hands. He’s supposed to be solving a crime. He can’t get sidetracked. “Have you got a map of the city?” he asks the librarian. There’s one back at headquarters, of course, but since he’s here…

“Of course, sir.”

She brings it quickly and Roy lays it out on the table, staring down at it and hoping that some kind of answer presents itself.

“Lieutenant Colonel!”

“Riza? What are you doing here?”

Hawkeye’s face is flushed, and she barely seems able to catch her breath. Roy is gathering her up in his arms before he thinks about it. He lets go, lets her take a step back. She looks up at him and gasps in a gulp of air. “Elric,” she pants. “He’s gone.”

Roy frowns. “What do you mean, gone?” And then, “Hughes was supposed to be looking after him.”

“Just come on,” Riza says, pulling on his arm. She drags him out of the library.

She practically throws him into the passenger seat of a car, and they’re several streets away from the library before Roy thinks to ask where they’re going.  
  
“Shut up,” Riza tells him. “I’m concentrating.” She leans forward over the steering wheel, squinting into the bright city streets. Roy is about to ask her what she’s looking for when she abruptly jerks the wheel and screeches to a halt in a narrow alleyway, at the end of which is parked a refrigeration truck, just like the ones that deliver to headquarters. Roy is not any less confused, but Riza pushes open the driver’s door and is pulling a pistol before she’s even stepped out.

Roy is slower, but he seems to understand that he is also supposed to get out of the car. He follows behind Riza, keeping his mouth shut because he has no idea what they’re walking into.

Riza flashes a hand signal, ordering him to help her flank the back doors of the truck, and he does so. Riza reaches over to yank on the door handle, and pulls open the door of the truck. Roy holds his breath, but no gunfire comes bursting out of the truck. Riza waits a few heartbeats, then jumps up onto the back of the truck and climbs in. Roy follows.

He shivers as he walks into the cold space, watching his breath puffing out into the air. All around him, the frozen corpses of pigs and cows hang suspended from the ceiling. He hears someone crying. He hears crazed laughter.

And he realizes, _this is a car that could hide a body_. He looks to Riza. How did they know?

Her lips are drawn tightly together, the way it always is when she’s concentrating or ready to kill. She nods forward, sending Roy ahead of her. She holds her pistol in a steady two-handed grip, covering his approach.

Roy pushes his way past a large dead cow, and takes in a deep breath as he sees Edward Elric on his knees in front of a man in a woman’s dress who holds a huge cleaver above his head.

Roy snaps his fingers. Fire flares up, and the man falls, screaming, to the ground. Ed’s head snaps up and he finds Roy immediately. He’s already scrambled to his feet by the time Roy gets to him. Riza shoots the screaming serial killer twice in the head. Quiet resumes.

“Come on,” Roy says, holding out his hand for Edward to take. The boy does.

“Al!” Edward shouts, as they reach the edge of the truck. He jumps down and runs toward the suit of armor. “Al!” He wraps his arms around his brother, babbling and crying as Roy and Riza look on. “I thought I was going to die,” he says, over and over again. Riza reaches out for Roy’s hand. He lets her take it.

“What kind of a mess did you leave me?” Hughes asks, as he steps around Ed and Al.

“The suspect is dead, sir,” Riza announces. “But there should still be plenty of evidence in the truck.”

“Right. I suppose I’ll get to work then.”

“We can help,” Roy offers, but Hughes shakes his head.

“Get the boy back to Headquarters. He’s been through enough for one day.”

Roy nods agreement, and then climbs into Hughes’ jeep with Riza and the young brothers. Edward Elric is remarkably silent in the back of the vehicle. The ride to Headquarters isn’t _long_ , but even so, Roy is sure it’s the longest he’s ever gone without hearing the boy speak.

He guides Ed and Al up to his office, once they’ve pulled up to Central Command.

“Are you hurt?” he asks Ed. The boy shakes his head. “Okay. Sit down. Just… sit down and relax, okay.” If the kid wasn’t twelve, Roy would pour him a drink. He wonders if he should pour himself a drink. His fingers twitch as if reaching for the bottle.

“I froze up,” Ed mutters, as he collapses into the chair in front of Roy’s desk. “I couldn’t even do anything.”

“That’s alright,” Roy says softly. He’s just a child. No one should have ever expected him to… and how did he end up in the back of that truck anyway?

The boy’s mouth drops open, and he just shakes his head. “It _isn’t_. How am I going to get my brother’s body back if I was going to let myself die?”

There is so much pain in his voice that it stabs Roy right through the heart. He puts his hand on Ed’s shoulder. The comforting gesture feels awkward, but he tries anyway. “You’re not going to die. You’ve got a team to protect you. You’ve got me.” Ed frowns and looks up at Roy. “I try not to let people under my command die, Edward.”

“Oh. Right.”

Roy sighs. “People freeze up on the battlefield. Even Alchemists. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Ed is still hunched over in his chair, staring blankly at nothing. “Come on. I’ve got an idea.” He lifts his hand off Edward’s shoulder and heads for the door. Eventually, the boy follows him.

“What is this place?” Edward asks, when they reach their destination. Roy hands the boy a pair of sound-deadening earmuffs and “A gun?”

“You’re not always going to be able to - or want to - use alchemy. It’s good to have a backup. And it’s not hard to practice with a gun. Good soldiers, like Major Hughes and Lieutenant Hawkeye and Lieutenant Havoc, went to the academy for years so they could learn how to protect themselves and others with this weapon no matter what’s happening, so they _don’t_ freeze up. Alchemists don’t get that kind of training. But you still need to know how to keep yourself and others safe.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Yes. But I haven’t used it since Ishval.”

“Oh.”

“Look, it’s a personal choice, kid. Nobody’s gonna make you carry a weapon you don’t feel comfortable with. But it’s a good idea for you to get comfortable with it now, so you can make an informed decision.”

Ed nods, looking down at the pistol in his hand. “I guess that makes sense.”

Roy puts his hand on Ed’s shoulder and turns him toward the target. “Widen your stance a little.” Ed just stares at him. “Move your legs. Like this.” Roy shows him the right way to stand, and Ed copies him, until Roy is satisfied. “Okay, now hold the gun out in front of you. Keep your arms straight. ” Ed does what he’s told, and Roy takes several steps back. “Get a good eye on the target first,” he calls to Ed. “Then squeeze the trigger.”

Ed waits a few seconds and then pulls the trigger. The noise of the shot makes both Ed and Roy jump, even with hearing protection in place. But Ed doesn’t drop the gun, at least.

He frowns, looking out at the target. A bullethole has ripped the paper up near the top left corner. “I missed.”

“You hit the paper. That’s something.” Ed glares at him. “Just try again, Fullmetal.” The use of his Alchemist name makes the boy swell up with pride, and he gives a satisfied nod.

“Right,” he says, under his breath. “I can do this.” He adjusts his stance the way Roy had shown him. He pulls the trigger. Roy bites his lip as the gun report sounds. “I hit it!” Ed exclaims. He’s practically jumping up and down. “Look, I hit it!”

Indeed, there is a bullet hole visible inside the black human-shaped target, burrowing through the right shoulder.

“Good for you.” Roy’s voice is shaking a little, but the kid doesn’t seem to notice. “Listen, stay as long as you want, okay? Check the gun back in before you leave.”

Ed nods, already getting ready for his next shot. Roy pulls his protective earmuffs off as he walks past the Captain at the desk. He can hear the guns firing in the range behind him, louder now. He tries not to flinch, especially since the Captain is saluting him as he walks past. Roy nods in recognition of the young woman, and heads to the Investigation Department to wait for Hughes.

The command room is empty, except for him, with all of the Investigations Department out investigating or working on reports in their smaller office across the hall.

He sits down in a chair next to the map, and tries not to think about how much more paperwork this will add to his pile.

“I brought you dinner,” Riza says. She carries a plate in her hand and sets it down next to him.

“Did you eat?”

She nods, and Roy takes her at her word. He kisses her quickly on the cheek as she bends over to put the plate on the table, but she stiffens up and doesn’t acknowledge it. Roy sighs. He knows all of her arguments for keeping their relationship professional in the workplace, but the people here aren’t idiots.

“ _There’s a difference between_ having _a relationship and_ flaunting _a relationship, Roy,” she’s told him, many times. “If we give Command enough of a reason, they’ll have no choice but to invoke the fraternization regs.”_

Roy always bites his lip but nods agreement. Doing it Riza’s way has worked so far.

He settles for taking her hand and giving it a quick and gentle squeeze. “Did General Grand interview you?” he asks, around a bite of chicken.  
  
Riza nods. “Yes, and you’re next, so hurry up eating.” Roy says nothing. He shovels a forkful of potatoes into his mouth. “I know you don’t like him, Roy, but he is a commanding officer.”

“I don’t like him _because_ he’s a commanding officer,” Roy mutters, barely loudly enough to be heard. Riza’s eyes widen anyway. He should be smart enough not to say something like that out loud.

“Just stick to the facts. Don’t get off-topic.”

They both know “off-topic” means Ishval, and Ishval is the reason Roy Mustang risks a court martial every time he’s in the same room with Basque Grand.

“I know,” Roy sighs. “Play nice. Follow orders. Be a good dog.”

“Roy…”

He sets his plate down, suddenly not very hungry. “I guess I’ll go get this over with.”

“Roy,” Riza calls, as he heads for the door. He turns around. “You stopped a killer today. Just… remember that, okay? Sometimes what we do really is for the greater good.”

“Be thou for the people,” Roy says, and even though the mantra still retains a sarcastic edge in his voice, Riza nods.

“Sometimes it’s still true.”

* * *

Roy gives his report, trying not to squirm at the look of satisfaction on the Iron Blood Alchemist’s face when he describes how he’d set fire to the suspect. The man was a serial killer threatening a child, and Roy does not feel any remorse for what he’d done, but he doesn’t take pride in it either.

“Am I free to go, sir?” he asks, after nearly a full minute of silence from the Brigadier General.

“You say the boy didn’t participate in the fight at all?”

Roy shrugs. “He’s a child, sir. And he was frightened.”

“He’s a State Alchemist.”

“Yes… sir. Don’t worry, sir, I’m handling it.”

“Fine. Dismissed.”

Roy salutes and leaves the room, a picture of military obedience.

He heads for Elric’s quarters. The room is small, but private, because that’s one of the perks of being an officer, even a twelve-year-old officer. A second bed has been squeezed into the space, making it seem even more cramped. Al opens the door for him when he knocks and calls out his name.  
  
“Lieutenant Colonel Mustang,” he says cheerfully. “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Edward.”

“He’s not here.”

“Do you know where he is?”  
  
“He told me he was going to get something to eat.”

Roy nods. He can understand why Al might not want to follow him, then. It must be depressing to have to watch other people eat all the time when you can’t. “When you see him, can you tell him to come up to my office?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.” After a moment… “You’d tell me, if you knew he was going to put himself in danger, wouldn’t you?”

Al is silent for a long time, but then he says, “I’d tell you unless he told me not to.”

Roy sighs. But at least the kid is honest.

“Right. Send him up to my office, okay?”

“I will.”

Roy nods his acknowledgement and then leaves Al sitting in the room. He wonders if the suit of armor - the eleven-year-old _child_ \- is bored. Maybe he’ll bring Al a stack of books to read, or something. Or at least suggest the idea to Ed. Yeah. That could work.

He pushes his way into his office, clicks on a lamp, sits behind his desk. He glares at the piles of paperwork. Moonlight filters in through the walls behind him.

Ed slips into the room, remarkably quiet. He stands just inside the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, appearing to be in a staring contest with the front right leg of Roy’s desk. Then, his eyes flicker up to meet Roy’s. “You wanted to see me?”

“What were you doing in the back of that truck?” Roy asks softly. Ed shrugs. “We do not put ourselves in danger needlessly, Edward.”

“I thought I could handle it!”

“You could have been killed!”

“I thought that’s what State Alchemists are supposed to do.”

“Get killed?” Roy asks carefully.

“Fight.”

Roy sighs. Long breath in through his nose, then out. “Sit down.” Ed stares at him for several long, uncomfortable seconds, but then he sits in the chair in front of Roy’s desk. He looks so _tiny_ , Roy thinks. Not just a twelve-year-old, but a twelve-year-old who is small for his age. “State Alchemists fight with backup. That’s why I was working with the entire Investigations Division, and _you_ were working with _me_. And if you’re on a solo mission and you get into a situation you can’t handle, then you _call_ for backup. That’s why you’re an officer. You can conscript an entire militia if you need to.”  
  
“I… can?”

“You’re not supposed to need to, Elric.” The boy nods his understanding. Roy breathes out. “You’ve been through a lot in the past couple of days. Are you solid?”

“Yes. I’m fine, sir.”

“Okay.” Ed’s still sitting there, arms crossed over his chest, looking stubborn as hell. “Just… find somebody who will be there for you if you’re not. It doesn’t have to be me. Honestly, it probably _shouldn’t_ be me.”

“I have Al.”

“Right. Get out of here, then. See you in the morning.” Ed nods. He turns back as he’s halfway out of the room. “You need something? I’ve got things to do.”

“No. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Then he’s gone. Roy sighs. He grabs his coat and heads out into the city streets. Hughes lives near enough to Headquarters that Roy can walk to his place. The night sky is clear and the air is chilly and damp, hinting at a coming rain. Roy kicks at the red and brown leaves that have fallen into the gutters and tries to think about arcane alchemical formulas instead of the idea that someone is following him.

He still looks over his shoulder every few seconds. He never sees anything but windblown leaves and trash, and the long shadows cast by the streetlights.

It’s a relief to turn onto Hughes’s street and see the bright glow of light shining from the windows. He knocks on the door, and grins when Gracia pulls it open. She’s holding an infant in her arms. Roy stares down. The baby’s eyes are open, and she gurgles and swipes a hand in front of her, toward Roy. Something stirs in him, although he has no idea what. He’s the farthest thing from paternal.

“It’s nice to see you, Lieutenant Colonel,” Gracia says sweetly.  
  
He rolls his eyes. “You can call me Roy,” he reminds her. “You can always call me Roy, I’ve known you for years.”

She just shrugs, not looking at all chastised. Roy sighs.

Gracia waves him inside, and Roy steps into Hughes’s house. The Major is leaning against the kitchen counter and does not seem at all surprised to see him. He’s grinning a grin large enough to swallow his whole face, and his eyes never leave the baby girl in Gracia’s arms.

Gracia pulls out two beer bottles and sets them on the counter next to Hughes and Roy. Maes gives his wife a kiss that lasts just long enough to be almost uncomfortable for Roy, and then she heads down the hall to put the baby to bed.

Hughes picks up the beer bottles and leads Roy to a set of steps overlooking a small back garden. Roy takes the bottle opener Hughes offers and opens both their beers.

“You aren't scared you're going to fuck up fatherhood?” he asks Hughes.

“You know something I don’t?”

“I just…” he shrugs. “I'd fuck it up, is all.”

“What does Riza think?”

“That the army says we can't get married and that a baby would wreck any semblance of plausible deniability we have remaining.”

“But she _doesn't_ think you'd be a bad father.”

He and Hughes drink in silence for a while.

“The kid’s okay?” Hughes eventually says.

“Elric? Yeah. He says he's fine.”

“You believe him?”

“No. But what am I supposed to do?”

Hughes leans back against the brick wall of the house. “What about you? You okay?”

Roy takes a long time to answer. “Not really,” he admits, running his thumb in a circle around the top of his beer bottle.

“Thus your appearance on my doorstep.”

“You invited me.”

“But you never actually come unless you're trying not to worry Riza.”

“Riza knows me too well. Of course she's worried.”

Hughes snorts and takes another long drink of beer. “No one’s arguing that.” He looks his friend over. Roy looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “You really seeing ghosts, Roy?”

“I keep feeling like there's someone behind me, watching me, but there's never anyone there. I keep dreaming about the war. I almost set the library on fire today, Maes, I was that wound up.” He grinds his teeth and curls his fingers into a tight fist. “I thought this shit was supposed to get better, with time.”

Hughes shrugs. “Have you ever considered going back to Ishval?”

“Why the hell would I want to go back to Ishval?”

“Take the kid with you, it'll be good for him to see it.”

“He’ll hate us, Maes,” Roy says softly.

“He’ll hate the military. That just puts him on our side.”

“Maes…”

“It might give you some closure. You said yourself you’re a mess.”

Roy glares into his beer and Maes is glad for the moment that he isn’t wearing his set-shit-on-fire gloves. Roy grinds his teeth. “I can’t just _leave_.”

Hughes smiles, because it means Mustang is at least considering the idea.

“Are you kidding? _You_ tell Command you wanna be transferred to the border camps, they’ll put you on the first train. Your very presence will make sure the Ishvalans stay in line.”  
  
“Maes…”

Hughes rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying you’re going to… fall back into old habits. They were never your habits to fall into.”

“So what am I supposed to be doing there, besides intimidating the Ishvalans with my presence?”

“Helping. Teaching the kid. Diplomacy, I dunno, you’re good at that shit.”

“You want me to get the Ishvalans on our _side_? That train left the station a long time ago. And then we set it on fire as it was leaving.”

“ _You_ set it on fire. I used grenades, like normal people.”

Roy grows suddenly quiet. He takes a slow sip of his beer. “Are we actually joking about this?” he asks harshly.

Maes reaches over and takes his hand. “You’re allowed to have a sense of humor, Roy. And you’re allowed to forgive yourself.”

Roy finishes his beer, and stands up. “I should go. Work in the morning.”

“You can crash on the couch.”

Roy shakes his head. “I don’t want to intrude.”  
  
“Since when do you care about intruding.”

“Since you had a baby?”

“Right. I guess that’s a point. Elicia would probably keep you up all night anyway with her cries. She’s perfect, but she cries.”

“Good night, Maes.”

Hughes tosses Roy a lazy salute as he lets himself out. Back to Ishval. Roy broods over the idea the entire walk home. And he still can’t shake the feeling that someone is following him. It’s a relief to collapse on his bed and close his eyes. At some point, sleep claims him.


	5. Chapter 5

“Good morning, sir,” Riza says cheerfully as Roy enters the office. The rest of the men are working at their desks, but most of them stop and look up as he enters. Nobody salutes. Roy would be shocked if they did.

He walks over the coffee maker tucked into the corner. “I’m late, aren’t I?” he asks Riza.

“You did miss the morning briefing, sir.”

“Did you give them a good excuse?”

“I told them you were sick.”

“Don’t tell them I’m sick, they’ll make me go to Medical!”

Riza just shrugs. “What am I supposed to tell them, that you’re having bad dreams?”

“Fine. I’ll try to be on time for the morning briefing.”

“Very good, sir.”

* * *

Three days later, Edward Elric storms into Roy’s office (his private one, not the main one where the rest of the squadron should have stopped him. What kind of useless subordinates does he have that they’re intimidated by a twelve-year-old?). Roy rolls his eyes and puts on the smirk that he knows the kid hates.   
  
“Can I help you, Fullmetal?”

Ed slams a familiar stack of papers down on Roy’s desk. His eyes flicker up to Roy’s face, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Ishval?” he says, and his confusion is evident.

“It’s the military, Edward. We go where sent.”

“I know, but _Ishval_?”

“I’m not happy about it either.” This, at least, is not a lie, and that seems to make it easier for Ed to take him at his word.

The kid looks back at the orders on the desk. “It says we’re supposed to be investigating the refugee camps. Investigating them for what?”

“That they’re still operating under the conditions of the treaty, I suppose.”

“They need alchemists for that?”

Roy sighs. But he supposes the kid might as well know the truth. “Alchemists intimidate the Ishvalans. Command likes keeping a few in the camps.”

“Don’t they hate us?”

“They do,” Roy admits. “Don’t expect to make many friends.”

Ed kicks at the carpet with his flesh and blood leg, and shrugs. “I never had many friends anyway.”

* * *

“I don’t get to come with you,” Riza pouts, as she runs her hand down Roy's arm.

“It’s not the first time we’ve had separate orders.”

“How long will you be gone?”  
  
“Few months, maybe? No more than half a year.”

“Half a year is a long time, Roy.”

Roy smiles, and wraps his arm around Riza’s waist. He kisses her softly but insistently, until she’s gasping and squirming in his arms. Then he lets go of her and turns back to his duffle. “You’ll manage,” he says. “You’ve got Hayate.”

A dark look crosses Riza’s features. A worried look. “Ishval,” she says quietly. “Will you manage without me?”

He turns back to her, then gathers her in his arms again. “Stop worrying,” he insists, not entirely convincingly. She shrugs, and he holds her closer. He kisses her ear, her neck, her shoulder. Riza pushes him away.

“This is a serious question.”

“I’ll call you.”  
  
“Those phones are for military business only.”

“I’m in the military. You’re in the military. Our business is military business.”

“Roy.”  
  
“I’ll be one of the highest ranking officers out there, they can let me use a phone.”

Riza glares at him. Roy sighs. “I’ll write. I’ll write every day.”

“Do you even know how to write?” Riza smirks at Roy and he starts laughing.

He pulls her close again, still laughing, and whispers in her ear. “I’ll miss you,” he says, serious again.

Riza lets him hold her. He kisses her neck, her ear, her lips. He tries to memorize every detail of her that he will miss while he is gone.

"Get going, Roy," she finally breathes. "You'll miss your train."

"No, I won't," he protests. "Riza, we've still got time." He kisses her again, and this time she doesn't protest, and somehow they end up on Roy's couch and then Roy is afraid that he really will miss the train.

The Elric brothers loiter around the train station, waiting for Lieutenant Colonel Mustang to arrive. Their train is supposed to leave at 9:40. It’s 9:30, and there’s no sign of the man. Ed leans against the wall and exhales slowly, trying not to show any signs of nervousness. He glances at Al, who stands stock-still as always (and it’s unnerving, the way that this armor body has stolen away so much, the tics and twitches and sighs that make a human. Even Ed is starting to forget what Al used to be like, that he is still an eleven-year-old boy). Ed closes his eyes, and listens to the hisses of the train on the tracks and the voice of the ticketmaster calling from deeper inside the echoing stone building.

“Al, listen. I _have_ to go to Ishval. Being in the military now, this is my job. But you don’t have to come.”

“Do you think I’m going to leave you, Brother?”

“There’s lots to do in Central.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

Al’s voice doesn’t change, but Ed’s pretty sure he can detect the fear behind the protest anyway. He nods. “Fine, suit yourself. Look, there’s the Lieutenant Colonel.”

Mustang has a duffel slung over his shoulder, and his hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb in days. His uniform is rumpled too. Ed smirks, but decides not to make a comment about what the man was obviously doing. He just walks over to the train door nearest Mustang and climbs aboard. “Are you coming?” he yells over his shoulder.

Mustang follows him onto the train and settles his bag in the overhead compartment. Ed’s bag is at his feet. He’d been given a military-issue duffel, but he doesn’t have a lot to fill it with. He and Al had burned their entire house to the ground before setting out for Central, and he’s been living on bare necessities since then. The military hasn’t even bothered to size a uniform for him, so all he has is the pocketwatch and the dogtags around his neck. Either or both can confirm his authority as a State Alchemist, so they’re all he really needs. He doesn’t want a uniform anyway.

Mustang sits down as the train starts moving. Ed and Al sit across the aisle from him. The Elric brothers are no strangers to days-long train trips. Mustang looks more uncomfortable than either of them.

“You fought in the Ishval War, didn’t you, sir?” Al asks. Mustang nods, looking yet more uncomfortable. “Major Hughes said soldiers have bad nights. Is that why you don’t want to go back?”

“Major Hughes should keep his mouth shut.”

“Leave him alone, Al,” Ed says quietly. The elder Elric turns to stare out the window, as he does most of the time when they’re on these journeys. He eats lunch when it’s offered, stuffing the sandwich into his mouth so quickly it almost borders on rude. He knows Al doesn’t begrudge his need to eat, but it still feels awkward eating in front of him.

Mustang closes his eyes and might even fall asleep.

Ed reads a book he’d found in the public library about automail maintenance, knowing Winry won’t be around to bail him out if he gets into trouble in the deserts of Ishval.

Al suggests a game of cards.

The sun sets as they play, tinting the sky orange and pink and red through the train windows. Al slaps the pile in the middle of the seat across from them, and sets it to his side.

Mustang gets up and walks down the aisle toward another train car.

Dinner arrives.

“Do you think we should go looking for the Lieutenant Colonel?” Al asks, as Ed picks a dumpling out of his bowl and stuffs it into his mouth.

“He’s a grown man, Al. And an Alchemist. And a soldier. I’m sure he’s fine.”

Al says nothing for nearly a full minute, and then, “But I still worry about him, don’t you?”

Ed sighs. “Fine. I’ll go look for him.”

He finishes the last of his dumplings and sets the bowl on the chair before following in the direction Lieutenant Colonel Mustang had gone.

The first two train cars he passes through are contain only a few other passengers each. It turns out there aren’t that many people traveling east from Central. Ed isn’t surprised. There’s not a lot in the Eastern District, even before you get all the way out to the desert of Ishval.

The third car is a bar car. The Lieutenant Colonel is perched on a stool at the far end of the bar and is staring into his shotglass like he’s lost something at the bottom of it.   
  
“Sir?” Ed asks cautiously.

“Fullmetal.”

Ed climbs up onto the barstool next to Mustang. The Lieutenant Colonel’s eyes still look clear, if swimming with an emotion that somewhat reminds Ed of the way his mother had looked whenever he and Al performed alchemy or did anything else that reminded her of their father.

“Al was worried about you,” Ed says.

“Resembool isn’t very far from Ishval. Do you remember anything about the war?”  
  
Ed shakes his head. “Not really. My friend, Winry, her parents died there. They were doctors.”

Mustang takes in a ragged breath and downs his shot. “There was so much needless death. The Rockbells were doing their best to stem some of it.” He curls his hand into a fist so Ed won’t see it shaking.

“You knew them?”

Mustang closes his eyes. “There was so much needless death,” he repeats.

Then he opens his eyes again and looks Ed in the eye. “Do you regret attempting human transmutation in trying to resurrect your mother?”

Ed winces. He looks down at his metal arm. “Why are you asking?” he says carefully.

“The Ishvalans believe that alchemy is a taboo against God.”

“I don’t believe in God. And alchemy may be a taboo but it’s the only way we’re going to get our bodies back. And no, I don’t regret it. We had to try!”

“Sometimes alchemy comes at a terrible cost, that’s all I’m saying. But I guess you’d know that better than anyone.”

Ed sets his jaw and stares at his metal arm again before glancing sideways at the empty shotglass on the table. “Sir, whatever you did, you can’t undo it now. That’s not how alchemy works. That’s not how _anything_ works. You have to just keep moving forward until you get what you want. Isn’t that right?”

Mustang smiles. “And here I thought I was going to have to look after you on this assignment.”

“I can take care of myself, sir. I’ve been doing it for years.”

* * *

There is no train station within the limits of Ishval anymore, so Lieutenant Colonel Mustang gets off the train with Ed and Al at Resembool. “We can’t stay,” he warns the boys, and they nod their understanding.

“There’s nothing to stay for anyway,” Ed says to Al.

“We could visit Winry and Granny,” Al suggests.

Ed walks to the end of the train platform and stares off toward the horizon in the direction of the Rockbell’s house. “I guess we could. Except we can’t, so it’s best not to dwell on it, don’t you think?”

“I suppose you’re right, Brother.”

Ed grunts, a quiet acknowledgement of Al’s acquiescence. The Lieutenant Colonel walks up behind them and nods toward the entrance of the train station. A military convoy will be arriving to pick them up within half an hour, so Mustang and the brothers wait just outside the main door that faces the road. This being Resembool, the station master’s wife brings them all cold glasses of lemonade. Even Mustang seems excited by this development. Ed figures cold glasses of lemonade are fairly non-existent in Ishval.

The convoy arrives after almost exactly half an hour. There are four jeeps, even though they can all comfortably fit in one. “There are supplies in the others,” Mustang says. “Mail, medicines, food. Water. And one jeep alone is too tempting a target.”

Ed nods as if he understands, but he wonders… there isn’t supposed to be anyone left able to fight in Ishval.

Ed watches Al watching the horizon change from the grassy fields of Resembool to the desert sands of Ishval. It’s a slow progression, taking place over long hours, but the borderline itself is so fucking obvious it’s like… like someone had drawn it. Like a line on a paper map. Ed doesn’t even bother disguising his shock.

Large stretches of sand have been burned to shards of glass, they twinkle under the light of the late afternoon sun, blindingly bright. Burned wreckage, all that remains of whole towns, is visible in the distance. Mustang winces like it physically hurts him to see it. Ed watches the Lieutenant Colonel out of the corner of his eye and wonders if he should say anything. He decides against it.   
  
The convoy dips into a low valley (it used to be a trench, Ed knows, without knowing how he knows that. It’s a trench that’s been made larger and wider with alchemy, altered to be something different now but there’s no forgetting where it came from). The trench-valley is filled from end-to-end with military tents, plain brown canvas just slightly darker than the surrounding desert.

Ishvalan children run through the sandy streets, though their laughter quiets as the jeep passes by. Al waves at one of them, a young girl, but she just glares at them all, her hands clenched into tiny fists at her side. Ed recognizes the look in her eyes, it’s pure hatred. Ed sighs, and looks to Roy for guidance. The convoy rolls to a stop.

“Come on,” Mustang says. “We’ll have to announce ourselves to the commander of the camp.”

He jumps down from the jeep, and Ed and Al follow, Ed for once keeping his mouth shut as he takes in their surroundings. The jeeps have parked in front of one of the largest of the tents, nearly as big as the Elrics’ old house in Resembool. Mustang pushes aside the flap that serves as a front door and steps inside. It’s much darker inside the tent, though only marginally cooler.

Mustang takes a few steps forward to allow Ed and Al to get all the way inside the tent, then he stops and salutes the man standing behind a camp table talking quietly to a junior officer. After a moment, Ed salutes too. The movement still feels incredibly awkward, but he figures that if he wants anyone to treat him like an adult instead of a pretender, he has to play by their rules.

Colonel Maximilian Gloster looks up, and stands up straighter when he sees Mustang and the Elric brothers. “At ease, Flame. Fullmetal.” Mustang flinches again, and Ed steps a little closer to him without quite understanding why. He drops his salute when Mustang does and watches as the Lieutenant Colonel crosses his arms over his chest, in a posture halfway between relaxed and defensive.

“You can call me Mustang, sir, if it’s all the same. I hope not to need my alchemy here.”

Gloster’s eyes narrow, but he shrugs. His eyes flick over to Edward. “What about you, boy? Are you squeamish about using your talents?”

Ed glances at Roy, but the Lieutenant Colonel gives him no help at all on how to answer the question, so Ed gives a quick shake of his head. “No, sir.”

Gloster smiles. “Good. That’s what I like to hear.” He nods toward a young man (well, not young compared to Ed, but no one is) standing halfway between the table and the door, studying the new arrivals with undisguised interest. “The lieutenant will show you to your quarters, let you get settled in. Dinner in the mess at 1830.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mustang says evenly. He salutes again before following the lieutenant out of the tent.

“My name’s Trapper,” the lieutenant says, after they’ve walked past two or three tents, heading for a nearby rise where - it appears - the few alchemists posted here are staying. “That one’s yours,” Trapper says, nodding toward an empty tent on the far right of the short row.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Mustang says. “We can take it from here.”

Trapper salutes and turns back the way he came. Roy looks to Ed and Al. “Let’s get comfortable, I guess,” he says. It sounds as though he has no illusions that such a thing might be possible. But he pushes his way into the tent, Ed following closely behind. The setup is almost exactly the same as Mustang remembers it, except that there are two camp beds stuffed into the space, instead of one. “I guess they didn’t know about Al,” Mustang says slowly.

“It’s okay,” Al says. “I don’t sleep.”

“But still…” Ed starts.

“We can just explain the situation to Colonel Gloster,” Roy says. “I’m sure he can find me another place to sleep.”

“There’s really no need,” Al protests.

After a moment, Roy shrugs. “Fine. We’ll figure it out later.”

There are still a few hours left until dinner, so Mustang decides to take a look around the camp. He might as well get the inspection started, he figures, some part of him believing that the sooner he finishes his assignment, the sooner he can leave. Ed and Al follow in his wake like twin shadows, unusually quiet in the Ishvalan heat.

“Hey, neighbors,” a cheerful female voice says. Standing a few feet away, in front of another tent, is a woman about the same age as Ed and Al’s mom would be if she were alive. Her braided hair is black, like Mustang’s, but her eyes are bright blue, and her skin is almost as dark as an Ishvalan’s after months or years under the desert sun.

Ed glares suspiciously at the newcomer, and Mustang says nothing.

“Hello,” Al says, after a moment.

The woman’s eyes run up and down the suit of armor. “You’ll roast in that,” she says simply.

“I’m used to it,” Al replies.

“I’m Emma,” the woman says, holding out her hand to Roy. “Emma Wright.” She’s dressed like a native, not a member of the military, but the silver chain visible at her hip makes her easy to identify.

“You’re an Alchemist,” Mustang says.

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t expect you to recognize me, but I’ve definitely heard about you, Flame Alchemist.”

“I never wanted-”

“Relax, sir. I had the same orders you did. You’ll get no judgment from me.”

“Right.” Mustang clears his throat awkwardly. “How long have you been stationed here?”

“I never left.”

“You mean… you've been here since the war?”

Emma shrugs. “I kinda figured I owed them at least this much. It doesn't make up for… well, you know. But I've been doing what I can to help.”

Her gaze slides from Mustang to Al and Ed. “Who’s the kid?”

“I'm not a kid,” Ed growls.

“This is Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist,” Mustang says.

Emma’s eyebrows shoot up in clear surprise. “A State Alchemist. How old are you, ten?”

“I'm _twelve_.”

“I didn't think you could _be_ an underage Alchemist.”

“There's not really precedent,” Roy says. “But he's got the skill.”

“If you say so.”

Ed just rolls his eyes. “I'm going to see if there's anything to eat.”

“Dinner’s not for a couple of hours,” Roy reminds him.

“Whatever.”

Ed starts wandering through the sandy streets of the camp, with Al’s clanking footsteps close behind him.

“Brother?” Al asks, after Ed has been walking for several minutes, past the mess tent and the command tent and most of the camp.

“What, Al?”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. I'm just walking, okay?”

He tromps over the melted-glass dunes, with Al struggling to keep up. After maybe half an hour of this directionless drive pushing him forward, Ed stops suddenly. He sucks in a gasp that almost turns into choking. “Brother!” Al calls.

Ed wipes his face with the back of his hand, still feeling like he wants to vomit. They've stumbled upon a mass grave out here in the desert, teetering piles of human bones, their skulls empty and staring. “There must be thousands of them,” Ed whispers.

Al just stands there, looking sadly at his brother. “Come on, Ed,” he says after a while. “Let’s go back.”

“I don't _want_ to go back, I _hate_ it here.”

Suddenly, the bone-filled crater starts to fill in with sand. Ed whirls around. Major Emma Wright is kneeling on the ground in front of a transmutation circle several yards away.

“Where did you come from?”

Lieutenant Colonel Mustang walks over to Ed and Al as Emma works to bury the evidence of his years-old crime.

“Did you honestly think we'd let you go wandering into the desert by yourself?” He pulls a canteen off his belt and hands it to Ed. “Drink this.”

“I don't want-”

“I'm not asking.”

“Fine.” Ed drinks the water. He drinks down far more of it than he would have predicted. He looks up at Mustang. “If you were following us, you could have stopped us before we got… here.”

“You deserve to know the truth, Fullmetal.”

“Yeah? What truth is that?”

Emma, now finished with her work, walks over to them. She stares out over the still sands, and it's obvious that she's still thinking about the grave of innocents that lies beneath them.

She crosses her arms over her chest and looks at Ed. “In the spring of 1908, the Fuhrer signed Executive Order 3066, requiring every State Alchemist whose skills could be applied on a battlefield to the front lines of the Ishval Conflict. At that point, the war had been continuing for seven years, with no clear victor and no end in sight. The Fuhrer wanted to bring things to a decisive conclusion.”

“So…” Ed’s not sure if he's asking a question or not. He glances at Mustang.

“So we had our orders, Fullmetal,” Mustang whispers. “No quarter given to the enemy. No line drawn between civilian or combatant. We were to completely wipe out the Resistance. And graves like that one, that's our legacy.” He sighs, and closes his eyes. “You wanna know why the people call us State Alchemists the dogs of the military? It's because of what we did here. Once you bring alchemy into play against an unarmed population, it isn't war any longer, it's slaughter.”

“I would never use alchemy to kill people! That’s-”

“It wasn't a choice, Fullmetal.”

“Don't call me that!”

Emma glances at Mustang, then back at Ed. “Edward, right?” He nods. “Edward. In the beginning, many State Alchemists did try to protest their orders, just as you protest now. But in the end, those who would not obey the command were labeled as deserters and traitors, and they were executed.”

“But. But that's…”

“You said you wanted to be a dog of the military, kid,” Roy reminds him. “This is the truth of it.”

Ed stares out at the sand. He curls his automail arm around his body, wishing it could protect him from the weight of this new revelation. “Fine,” he finally says. “Come on, Al. Let's go back.”

“Brother…” Al starts, as he follows in Ed’s hurried footsteps back toward the camp.

“I don't want to talk about it, Al.”

“The Lieutenant Colonel and Major Wright are very sad.”

“They _should_ be sad, Al, they helped murder over a million people!”

“But it wasn't their fault, was it, Brother? You heard what Major Wright said.”

“I dunno, Al, if it wasn't their fault, whose fault was it?”

“The Fuhrer’s?”

“Do you really think that?”

“I think… they're very sad. And if they could take it back, I think they would.”

Ed sighs, thinking about how Mustang had asked him about regrets on the train. “I think you're probably right, Al,” he admits.

“Be nice to the Lieutenant Colonel.”

“I'm always nice.”

“Ed…”

“Fine. I'll be nice.”

“Thank you, Brother.”


	6. Chapter 6

Roy enters their tent carefully, holding a dinner tray balanced in his left hand. Ed hadn't wanted to eat with all the rest of the military personnel and Roy figured it wouldn't hurt to let the boy have a little more time to come to terms with the horrors he's just been confronted with.

Ed sits on the edge of his cot in his pants and undershirt, his back to Roy. As Roy watches, Ed hisses and keeps trying to move, as if looking for a comfortable position that doesn't exist. He keeps touching his shoulder, where the automail meets flesh, and then pulling back as if it burns his fingers. It probably does, Roy realizes. Those metal limbs in this baking heat can't be comfortable.

“Are you alright, Edward?”

“I'm fine,” the boy growls. “It’s just this stupid automail. It’s…”

“Hot?”

“Burning. It feels like my arm and leg are on fire.” He looks miserably up at Roy.

“I'm sorry,” Roy says softly. “I didn't really think that through.” He knew Ishval was hot as hell, but he’d never had to suffer it with automail.

Ed shrugs. “Yeah, well. I didn't either. It's fine, I'll get used to it.”

Roy digs through his duffle, finally pulling out the standard issue first aid kit he's glad he rarely uses. He sits on the cot next to Edward.

“What are you doing?” Ed hisses, as Roy squeezes some ointment on his fingers and reaches for his shoulder.

“It’ll help cool the burn.” Ed’s skin where the automail touches is bright red, almost blistering in places. No wonder it’s painful.

“I can do it myself,” Ed demands.

“I don't think you can. It's an awkward angle.”

Ed takes a slow, deep breath, and blows it out as Roy brushes over his shoulder with the medical cream. “ _Fine_.”

“Is it helping?”

“Yes,” Ed mutters.

“Good.”

“I can do my leg by myself.”

“Alright.” Roy hands the tube over to Ed. Ed holds it his hand as Roy gets up and walks over to his own bunk. Ed watches Roy dig around in his duffle until he pulls out some paper and a pen. “Hey, Mustang.” Roy looks up. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome, Edward.”

“And it's not, you know, your fault or whatever. They would have killed you if you didn't do what they said?” He phrases it as a question, looking for confirmation.

Roy closes his eyes, although that just brings the images more clearly to the forefront. “Yeah, they would’ve,” he says quietly.

“So… I'm glad you're not dead. I guess.”

Roy shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “I appreciate it, Edward.”

“Sure, whatever. Can I have some of that paper?”

Roy hands over a sheet, and the two of them spend the rest of the night growling and scratching things out and attempting to write the coherent letters they'd promised to send.

“Elric? Edward, wake up!”

“Huh? What?”

“Come on. It's time to get up.”

Ed opens bleary eyes and looks around. “What the hell, Mustang? The sun isn't even up yet.”

“That's a good thing, remember?”

“Ugh. Right. Where's Al?”

“Helping unload supplies.”

“ _Why_?”

“I suppose he likes feeling useful, Edward.”

“Fine,” Ed mutters, as he starts pulling on his clothes. “What are we supposed to be doing?”

“I have paperwork, of fucking course.”

Ed grins at Mustang’s language, glad that the man apparently doesn’t feel the need to censor himself in front of him the way most people do.

“I guess I’ll help Al, then?”

“Don’t get into any trouble, Elric.”

For a minute, Mustang is sure that the boy is gonna toss back some sarcastic quip, but Ed just nods, looking down at the sand. “Yeah. Don’t worry. I won’t go wandering off.”

Al is easy to find, seeing as how he towers over most of the soldiers. He’s helping move large crates and boxes out of the backs of the three jeeps from yesterday, setting them down next to the mess tent so they can be catalogued. “The ones with the military seal go over here,” he instructs, “And the other ones go over there so they can be distributed to the refugees.”

“Sure, Al,” Ed says, not at all surprised that his brother just assumes he’s there to help. He doesn’t mind helping Al, honestly, and if Al thinks this project is worth taking on, than why not do what he can to finish it quicker?

Ed lets Al stack one of the crates on top of a dolly that has special wheels designed to roll through the sand. Once Al has loaded a second crate on top of that one, Ed starts pulling the whole carefully balanced pile over toward the Ishvalan section of the camp, where dozens of women have already begun queueing up for rations.

Despite their numbers, they wait with an almost unsettling calm. But Ed is very conscious of the number of Amestrian soldiers carrying guns that hover over them. He fiddles with the latches on the crate until it swings open, but before he can start handing out the contents, one of the soliders pushes him aside. “Thanks for the help, kid. I’ll take it from here.”  
  
“I’m not a _kid_ ,” Ed growls. “I… I outrank you.” The soldier raises an eyebrow in disbelief, until Ed fishes his watch out from his pants pocket and holds it out for the young man to see.

“But…”

Ed rolls his eyes. “These people are hungry,” he insists. “Are you going to ‘take it from here’ or not?”

The soldier nods frantically. “Of course, sir. I’ll get right on it.” He gives Ed a crisp salute. Ed just rolls his eyes and turns back toward the mess tent so he can meet up with Al.

His brother, along with Major Emma Wright, is walking down the street toward him. “Hi, Ed,” Al waves cheerfully.

Emma smiles too. “I saw what you did there, Major.”

Ed shrugs. “People are idiots.”

Ed and Al fall into step behind Emma, who stops just short of the supply crates where the soldiers stand guard and begins digging in the dirt with her finger. As she works, a few of the children standing in the line wander over to her, though they stand well away, as if torn between Emma and their mothers.

“Watch this,” Emma announces, and the children lean forward with interest.

Ed smiles as he watches Emma touch the circle on the ground, transmuting a carved horse out of the sand. “Oh, yeah! Al and I used to make toys like that all the time when we were little.”

Emma hands the clay animal to one of the little boys who stands near the supply crates, waiting solemnly for his mother to return from the ration line. He says something in Ishvalan, and Emma says something back.

“You know Ishvalan?” Ed asks, surprised.

“I've been living here for three years, of course I know Ishvalan. Not well enough. There's a lot of things that don't translate well. But I get by.”

“Does everybody here know Ishvalan?”

“No. I mean, most of us have picked up at least a few words. But the refugees understand Amestrian for the most part, and there are plenty of soldiers who don't think they should be wasting time with conversation.”

She settles back onto her heels and gets ready to transmute another figure.

“I thought Ishvalans don’t like alchemy,” Ed interrupts.

“They’re children, Edward. They like toys more than they dislike alchemy.”  
“But won’t their moms get mad?” Al wonders.

Emma shrugs. “Some do. More did, in the beginning. But I think now, they are just grateful for anything that can bring their children joy.”

Ed watches as the little boy plays with the horse, giggling and taunting his young friends.

“Those kids don’t look Ishvalan,” Al says, after a minute.

Ed looks over at Emma. “He’s right. They look Amestrian.”

Emma finishes her transmutation and doesn’t say anything for a long minute, then she turns back to the brothers. “There aren’t any Ishvalan men in the camp. Who do you think their fathers are?”

“Oh,” Al says quietly.

Ed looks to the soldiers still handing out food and water. Some dark expression crosses his face, until Al puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently.

* * *

Ed sits on a supply crate, trying his best to clean the sand out of his automail joints. It’s a losing prospect given that he is surrounded on all sides by more fucking sand.

He looks up when he realizes he’s being watched. The red eyes of an Ishvalan child stare out at him from behind a nearby tent.   
  
“You don’t have to hide back there. I’m not gonna hurt you or anything.”

The child - Ed figures she’s probably a girl, since she’s got long hair and is wearing a dress - takes a cautious step toward him. And that’s when Ed notices that both of her arms are missing, amputated above the elbow.

“Fuck,” Ed mutters. He immediately puts down his compressed air pump and tries to look casual. “You wanna see it?” he asks the girl, holding out his automail arm. She takes another step closer to him, and then looks over her shoulder before taking one more step. She scans the area behind him too. Damn, this kid is jumpy. Ed looks over his shoulder, but he doesn’t see anything.

The girl takes a step closer to him, and stops just short of being within easy touching distance. “I’m Ed. What’s your name, kid?”

“Kaleen.”

“You want metal arms like mine?”

She nods. “Mama says the soldiers won’t let me get them.”

“What the fuck?” The kid just stares at him. Ed sighs. “Look, I’ll… figure it out, okay? I know someone who can make you really amazing metal arms, you’ll love them.”

Kaleen just shrugs. She clearly doesn’t believe him.

Ed finds Mustang in the command tent, buried in paperwork just like he promised. Ed explains the situation as quickly as he can.

Roy sets down his pen, and sighs. “The Ishvalan refugees can’t cross the border without signed authorization from Colonel Gloster. It requires some kind of major extenuating circumstance, usually a medical clearance or-”

“So why can't that kid get medical clearance? There's an automail mechanic in Resembool, you said these people go there for supply runs all the time!”

“Medical clearance is for life-threatening illness or injury only.”

Mustang jumps, and hastily salutes. “Colonel!”

Ed doesn’t salute. He just turns around to stare down the Colonel with all of his twelve-year-old fury. “That's bullshit!” he demands.

“Elric…” Mustang warns.

“It’s alright, Lieutenant Colonel,” Gloster says, holding up a hand. He looks down at Ed. “I don’t make the rules, boy, I just enforce them. It’s very important that we keep order in these camps, I’m sure you understand that.”

Edward clenches his automail fist and Roy watches him very carefully, ready to step in it the kid does something stupid like attack a ranking officer. But Ed just looks thoughtful for a minute. “I can go to Resembool, right?”

Roy frowns “What are you…?”

“I can go,” Ed insists, before Mustang can finish the question. “And I can bring Winry back with me. She'd want to help, I know she would!”

“You want to bring an underage civilian to a war zone?”

“It's not a war zone. It's a… an after-war zone. It's probably the safest place in the world, with all these soldiers here!” Ed glances toward the open door of the tents, through which it's possible to see the Ishvalans milling about, living their daily lives. “You know this place is full of underage civilians, right?”

Roy says nothing. He watches Colonel Gloster while trying not to be obvious about it, and settles in to wait for an answer. When none is forthcoming, he sighs. “How about it, Colonel? If the kid brings an automail engineer to the camp, would you let her set up to help the refugees?”

“I…”  
  
“She’ll follow the rules,” Roy insists. “I- I’ll make sure of it.” Edward frowns at him, and Roy wonders if the boy had caught the stutter in his words. But after a second he just turns back to the Colonel, waiting for his answer.

Gloster sighs deeply and rubs his forehead as if warding off a headache, but he nods. “Fine. She can’t stay permanently, mind you.”  
  
Ed’s grin is contagious enough that Roy finds himself smiling, too.

“The next supply convoy doesn’t go out for another month,” the Colonel points out, and that wipes the smile off Ed’s face, but Roy shoots him a warning glance and says,

“That’ll be fine.”

“A _month_ ,” Ed whines, as he follows on Roy’s heels through the camp.

“You’re lucky he said yes at all.”

“I know, but-”

Roy shakes his head, the look on his face so utterly serious that Ed snaps his mouth shut. “There are plenty of others in the command structure who would never allow offering comfort to the Ishvalans.”

Ed frowns. “Is that what we’re doing? Offering comfort?”

“What else would you call giving an automail prosthetic - for _free_ \- to an Ishvalan child? Children. Whoever _asks_.” He’s glaring at Ed as though that might help the boy realize what a huge can of worms he’s just opened, but Elric is pretending to be oblivious. Roy sighs, and pushes ahead, letting Ed follow him as they near the mess tent.

“Mustang?” Ed calls, after a few steps. “Why do you say it like comfort is something bad?”

Roy stops. He opens his mouth to answer, but before he can get a word out, he’s knocked to the ground by an attacker who has jumped out from behind the few supply crates still sitting outside the mess. The boy holds a kitchen knife in a tight-fisted grip, raised above his shoulder, ready to punch it down into Mustang’s chest.

“Hey!” Ed yells. He runs up and tackles the young Ishvalan, rolling him off of Mustang and landing awkwardly on top of him. He claps quickly and grabs the knife, alchemically deconstructing it. Melted metal runs over both their hands.

Ed holds the boy down with his automail arm. He raises an eyebrow at Mustang. “You’re good, right?”

Mustang nods. Ed picks himself up off the Ishvalan boy, though he doesn’t stop glaring at him. And then, the sound of a gunshot pierces the still air. The Ishvalan boy jerks, and a pool of blood spills out from his head. Half his face has been blasted off.

“What the hell?!” Ed screams. He doesn’t look at the body. He already feels sick.

Lieutenant Trapper stands a pace away, gun still in his hand. “He tried to murder an officer of the Amestrian Military,” he says simply.

“So you _shot_ him?”

Trapper shrugs. He doesn’t even look guilty. Ed feels cold despite the heat of the desert. He looks to Mustang for help.

“He was a child,” Mustang says weakly.

“He was thirteen. A man by Ishvalan tradition if not Amestrian law. And more to the point, Lieutenant Colonel: If we didn’t make a clear example of this one, others would try.”

A look of pure disgust curls onto Mustang’s face, but he doesn't say anything.

“I'll report it to the Colonel,” Trapper says.

Mustang stares down at the body and the blood-soaked sand for a long time.

“Sir?” Edward says quietly. “You didn't even defend yourself, when that boy attacked you. If I hadn't been there…”

“Then someone else would've killed him to protect me,” Mustang spits.

“Yeah, but-”

Mustang sighs, and glances at Ed. “I didn't have time to draw a circle.”

“You could wear your gloves. Or carry your gun.”

“I don't want to be responsible for any more Ishvalan blood.” He looks down at the body again. “I should have expected- Never mind.”

“You wear your gloves in Central and you've never hurt anyone. You should be able to defend yourself.”

Ed’s got that determined look on his face. Roy sighs. “I can't tell if you're right or just persistent.”

“I'm right. Ask anyone. Ask Emma.”

“Fine.”

Roy pulls his gloves out from his pocket and puts them on.

The next day, he pulls his gun out of his duffle bag and goes out into the sand flats to shoot at empty bottles until he’s sure he remembers what he’s doing with the weapon. He stays out on the sand flats until he’s sunburned and miserable. He stares down at the gun in his hand, holds it under his chin, counts to three, then five, then ten. Then he lowers it and tucks it into his holster. Riza always says that a gun is a tool of protection. Roy tries to believe her.

He goes back to his tent then, and writes a desperate letter, trying to explain to Riza how much he misses her and how much he needs her. He explains what happened to the Ishvalan boy, he makes it obvious how guilty he feels. If Riza were here, she would know what to say. She couldn’t ever erase his guilt, but she could mitigate it. He scrawls his messy signature at the bottom of the letter and stuffs it into his pants pocket, and then finds a not-empty bottle to keep him company.

Emma finds him an hour or so later, sitting with the bottle of vodka outside his tent. He sets down the bottle when he sees her, but there's no disguising how drunk he already is. She sits down next to him. Even from here, smoke is visible from the edge of the Ishvalan section of the camp, curling into the sky. It mixes with the painted colors of sunset, making the whole scene seem unreal.

“Ishvalans burn their dead?” Roy asks. He doesn't want to look at the smoke, but he can't tear his eyes away from it.

“Always at sunset, yeah.”

“I never knew that,” he murmurs. How could he never have known that?

“They say fire is cleansing.”

“It isn’t. Fire’s just fire.”

“Spoken like a man who doesn’t believe in a higher power.”  
  
Roy frowns. “Do you?”

“I dunno. I believe in the testable laws of science, I don’t think you can be an alchemist any other way. But the way these people talk about God…” she shrugs. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have some… other thing… to tell you what’s right and wrong, sometimes?”

“You think you should be punished when you do something wrong?”

“What, like break an alchemical taboo? Or massacre an entire population?”

“Amestrians talk about God. When we talk about human transmutation, we say-”  
  
“That no one sees the face of God and lives. I know.”

“So that’s what you’re getting at? That there’s some laws that just can’t ever be broken?”

“At least not without consequence.”

Roy thinks about the Elric brothers, about what they lost trying to break an unbreakable law. Their punishment is obvious, but…

He stares out at the faraway smoke, elbows resting on his knees. “So, what’s our punishment, then?”

“We have to live with the knowledge of what we’ve done for the rest of our lives. Don’t you think that’s enough?” Roy shrugs. “Go talk to the Ishvalans, Mustang. None of them here are priests, but still. One of them might be able to help you confront your guilt, if you’re determined to do so.”

“Right.” Roy sighs and picks up the bottle, slipping into his tent with it and setting it down on the rickety camp table. Despite the early hour, he falls into restless sleep almost immediately.

When Edward comes in, hours later, after self-consciously hanging out and watching the Ishvalans celebrate a funeral, he frowns at the half-empty bottle on the table and frowns even more when he sees that Roy is soaked with sweat and kicking at tangled bedsheets. As Ed sits down on his cot, Roy starts thrashing around even more fiercely.

“Hey!” Ed yells. “Mustang!”

But the other man doesn’t appear to hear him. Ed gets up, takes one cautious step and then another toward Mustang’s cot. He places his hand on Mustang’s shoulder and shakes gently. “Mustang? Are you okay?”

Mustang hisses as if he’s in pain. Ed growls. “Mustang!” he yells again. This time, the man does startle awake, although he puts his arm up in front of his face as if he’s afraid of an incoming blow.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ed mutters. “I’m not gonna hit you.”

“Edward?”

“Yeah. Are you… you know… cool? It seemed like you were having a nightmare or something.”

Roy buries his face in his hands and takes deep breaths until he’s sure he remembers where he is. And where he isn’t.

“Do you… wanna talk about it or whatever?”

“I really don’t.”

“Fine, suit yourself.” Ed rolls over onto his back on his cot and kicks off his boots. Mustang licks dry lips and swallows hard. “Was it about the war?” Ed asks, after a moment.

Mustang sighs. He looks at Ed, at the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. He looks at the fluttering flap of the tent, and the grains of sand piling up just inside that doorway. He holds his fingers around his wrist like a loose handcuff and feels the beating of his pulse against his thumb.

“Yes and no,” he hedges.

Ed pushes up onto his elbows and looks over at him. “What was it about, then?”

“Punishment,” Roy admits. His voice is rough and ragged.

“What the hell, Mustang?”

“There’s no equivalent exchange for over a million lives.”

“So you torture yourself while you’re sleeping? That’s pretty fucked up, man.”

“I deserve it.”

“No, you fucking _don’t_. I thought we talked about this.”

Mustang sighs. He reaches for the bottle on the rickety camp table until Ed claps and grabs it, reducing it to shattered shards of glass. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re just a-”  
  
“If you call me a goddamn child, I _will_ hit you.”

“Fine.” Mustang turns away from Ed, curls up on his side, stares at the far wall of the tent and flinches away from the voices whispering in his ear. He can feel hands around his throat, fire licking at his skin, fists raining down hard blows until he spits up blood. The ghosts of Ishval want their vengeance. And he is just damaged enough that he almost wants it, too.

Edward starts to sing, low under his breath, but steadily gaining volume as Roy listens. The kid actually has a good voice. Roy rolls over onto his back so he can hear better. He doesn’t recognize the language, and that surprises him. “What is that?” he asks, when Ed’s stopped singing.

“A lullaby, I guess? My dad used to sing it.”

“I thought you didn’t remember your dad.”

“I _don’t_ , really. Just little things.”

“What language is that?”

“No idea.”

“Huh.” Roy closes his eyes. The ghosts still taunt him, but their voices seem farther away, pushed down by Roy’s quiet humming. “Sing it again.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Ed sings until Roy’s breathing has relaxed and deepened. “Sw-” he stops short of saying sweet dreams, and rolls his eyes. “Better dreams, Mustang,” he orders. “Okay?”

Mustang shifts in his sleep and continues snoring softly. Ed watches his exhalations send ripples of air over his pillowcase. “Better dreams,” he repeats, and then he curls up and tucks his fist under his chin and closes his eyes and breathes, slow and deep, until he too is lulled into thankfully dreamless sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Ed steps out into the dawn-light and walks over to the Ishvalan side of the camp. He’s learned that Al is almost always over there these days, keeping his sleepless watch over the Ishvalan children that he’s already started to call his friends.

Despite the early hour, a gaggle of those young children have already clustered around Al. Some of them are even climbing _on_ him.

Al sits on the ground, tracing something in the sand with his metallic finger. At first, Ed thinks it must be a transmutation circle - what else would it be? - but then he looks down and realizes that it’s just a circle, a simple shape in the dirt. He frowns, crouching down nearby and watching. Al doesn’t even seem to realize he’s there; his brother doesn’t look up.

One of the kids, a slightly older one who’s actually got the white hair and red eyes of a full-blooded Ishvalan, lays down on his stomach in the dirt and pulls a pouch out of the pocket of his vest. He dumps out a double handful of marbles and grins up at Al.

The little kids scramble off Al’s armored body as he picks up a blood-red shooter in his large hand and sets it on the outside of the circle. The kid sets up the cross of smaller marbles in the center of the ring, and cups the other shooter, this one a bluish white, in his hand. The other children stand and watch, near silently.

Ed remembers this game, remembers how Granny Rockbell always sided with Winry when she accused him of cheating and stealing all her marbles. He’d had to give them all back, even the ones he’d actually earned, because the only other choice was to test if Granny actually meant it when she threatened to tan his hide. Winry has never played fair. Ed learned a long time ago that this fact is not likely to change. He deals with it.

Ed settles back on his heels as the Ishvalan kid takes his first shot. He knocks three marbles out of the ring, which is damn impressive given how young he looks, no older than five or six. Al leans forward and takes his own shot, aiming for the other boy’s shooter. He misses. Ed thinks it was a risky move, that he should have saved it for later in the game and knocked a few more marbles out of the ring first. The kid knocks out another marble. Al knocks out two. Ed is impressed by how dextrous Al’s armored fingers are. They dig little ridges in the sand when he moves, but his ability to play is not at all hampered. He’s not at all sure he’d manage as well with his automail arm.

The kid wins, and Al laughs, and he finally looks up and makes eye contact with Al. “Hello, Brother.”

The kids shy away from Ed as soon as he stands up and starts walking toward Al. State Alchemist. Right. Al tries to insist that they don’t have to worry, but they melt away quickly, disappearing back into the warren of Ishvalan tents, to breakfast or chores or who knows what else. “I’m sorry,” Al says. He sounds truly depressed.

Ed shrugs, and smiles at his younger brother. “Don’t be sorry. I think it’s great, the way you play with those kids.” He looks down at the circle in the dirt. “Did you let him win?”

“I wouldn’t do that!”

“You let Winry win,” Ed reminds him.

“Only because if I didn’t, she’d tell Granny.”

“Yeah.”

“Brother? Can I come with you when you go to Resembool? I’d like to see Granny again, I really would.”

“Yeah. ‘Course. She’d kill me if I didn’t bring you, anyway.”

“You want a game?” Al asks.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

Ed and Al wind up playing until Mustang looms over their circle, looking stressed. Ed pretends he doesn’t see the man, but Al (of course!) greets him pleasantly and asks him what he wants. Ed rolls his eyes.

“Fullmetal.”  
  
“ _What?!_ ” Ed snaps.

“You’re not here to _play_.”

“I know, I’m just… whatever. What do you want?”

“Come on.”

Ed gets to his feet and follows Mustang. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what this is about?”

“Colonel Gloster wants our help reinforcing the barricade.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“I didn’t ask, Edward.”

They stop to watch as Emma Wright transmutes a solid concrete wall out of nothing but sand. It’s obvious she’s done this kind of thing before. Ed claps and slams his hands down on the ground, linking his own wall up with hers. She grins at him, looking impressed. “Not bad, kid.” He shrugs. 

Roy draws a circle on the ground and presses down on it, concentrating deeply as a watchtower shoots up above the wall.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Ed says.

Mustang rolls his eyes. “I don’t _only_ do fire. Think how useless that would be.”

It takes the most of the day to finish the wall, with most of the effort going to making sure that their initial raw construction will hold up against any prolonged assault.

Lieutenant Trapper brings them lunch, and Ed takes it even though he distrusts the man after he shot that Ishvalan boy. Roy won’t look the lieutenant in the eyes either.

“Why’re we doing this?” Ed asks, as he chews on a cube of gravy-soaked meat.

“Might be the Colonel got some kind of intel,” Emma offers. “Some credible threat. Or might be he’s just paranoid.”

“Who’d wanna attack a refugee camp?”

“They wouldn’t be targeting the refugees, Fullmetal,” Mustang points out. “They’d be targeting… well, us. The military.”

“Who’s _they_?”

Emma wipes her mouth with the bottom of her shirt and leans back against the brand new wall. “The war lasted a long time before the Fuhrer’s ultimatum, remember? Many of the Ishvalans fled into the deep desert. High Command things they may still possess at least a vestigial army.”

“Have they attacked before?”

“Shortly after the surrender. We pushed them back. And there was… retaliation.”

“Retaliation?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are only women with children in the border camps.” When Ed nods, Emma continues. “The men and women of fighting age were split off and moved to higher security facilities.”  
  
“And ten percent of them were killed on the spot,” Roy whispers, feeling sick. He’d seen that report. He was already back in Central then, and he was sure the war over. But it wasn’t. He’d been terrified Command would send him back to finish the job he’d started. They never did, thank God. But Emma had been here. She’d never left.

“What the _fuck_ is _wrong_ with you people?!” Ed yells.

“It was a harsh object lesson,” Emma agrees. “But there haven’t been any further attacks.”

“You can’t be saying you _agree_ with this bullshit?!”

“Of course I don’t. But it’s war. We all do terrible things. You will too, one day.”

Ed looks to Mustang for help. The Lieutenant Colonel won’t look at him. “I’ve already done some pretty fucking terrible things,” Ed says, to no one in particular.

* * *

There are no attacks on the camp for the next three weeks, although the watchtowers are manned by a rotating crew of sentries, and sometimes even joined by the State Alchemists.

Ed notices Roy spending a lot more time on the Ishvalan side of the camp, but he doesn’t seem to be thrashing around in his sleep nearly as much anymore, so he figures it’s all to the good.

Ed and Al are chattering happily on the morning the supply convoy gears up to head for Resembool. Granny has a wide smile on her face as she welcomes them into the house, with big hugs and embarrassing kisses. Of course, when she hears why they’re there, she very nearly kicks their asses out onto the front steps and slams the door behind them.

“No,” Pinako snaps. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.”  
  
“Grandma, _please_ ,” Winry whines.

“I said no!”

The look on her face is downright scary, and Ed swallows hard. “Granny…” he starts.

She whirls on him, slamming her hands down on the table. “I lost my son to that godforsaken country. I won’t lose Winry, too.”

“Grandma, I _want_ to _go_.” Winry insists. She’s not whining anymore. She’s got the determined, calmly forceful tone Ed recognizes from whenever she’s performing automail maintenance with a stubborn patient. He smiles, although he keeps his head down so Granny doesn’t see it.   
  
“You’re just a child,” Pinako retorts. “You don’t know what you want.”

Ed and Winry both roll their eyes at that, not caring that Granny has spent years trying to teach them to have a respectful attitude toward their elders. “She’s not a _child_ ,” Ed says. “She’s the best automail mechanic in Amestris.”

“And I’m sure you’ve met every automail mechanic in Amestris?” Pinako replies, smoothly.

“You know I’m right.” He looks Granny in the eye. He isn’t intimidated by her, even as he knows that most of her blustering is because she loves him, almost as much as she loves her blood-related grandchild.

“Please, Grandma,” Winry says softly.

“You want to go?” Pinako repeats, as though she can’t quite believe it.

Winry squares her shoulders and stands up a little straighter as she nods. “It’s what my parents would have wanted.”

“How do you figure that?”  
  
“Because they went to Ishval to help people. Because that’s where they were needed.”

Pinako closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Granny, are you crying?” Ed asks.

She opens her eyes and shakes her head. “Of course not, stupid boy.”

Winry bites her lip, traces her finger in lines and cross-hatches on the table she’s sitting on. She wants to say she’s not going to die, but ever since her parents died she refuses to make, or believe in, promises like that. So instead she sticks to the facts. “It’s a refugee camp, Grandma. They’re _children_.”

“I’ll keep her safe,” Ed promises, and Winry and Pinako both snort. Ed’s cheeks flare red with embarrassment and he scowls. “You could come with us?” he suggest carefully to Pinako.

“Don’t be silly. Who would take care of the house?” She says nothing else for long minutes, and Winry and Ed both hold their breaths. Finally, Pinako throws up her hands. “I suppose you’d better go and pack what you’ll need,” she tells Winry. “But you make sure you leave me something to work with here, do you understand?”

Winry grins. She catches Ed’s eye and he starts laughing.

Granny plies them with far more food than they’ll be able to eat and wraps it in baking towels and tinfoil. Ed would ask how she even has so much food prepared when she didn’t know they were coming, but he knows she tends to go overboard when she cooks so that she’ll have meals to offer patients when they’re staying at the clinic, and so that she won’t have to interrupt a surgery or an all-nighter to make sure that she and Winry have something to eat. Al sticks most of the food inside his armor, and Ed hangs back on the lawn as Granny pulls Winry close to her and has a quiet conversation Ed’s too far away to overhear. Then she beckons him close and wraps him in a hug so tight it almost hurts. “I’m proud of you, Fullmetal Alchemist,” she whispers in his ear.

Ed’s jaw drops. “I thought… don’t you hate the military?”

Pinako’s face darkens, and her jaw works like she’s chewing a particularly tough bit of meat. “It’s not the path I would have chosen for you. But I never did have much say in what you got up to, boy.”

She pushes him away, gently. Ed turns back. “I meant what I said. I’ll take care of Winry.”

Granny smirks, and nods toward where Winry is waving Edward toward her, ready to move on. “I think it’s just as likely that she’ll take care of you.”

* * *

Major Wright has already found an extra cot somewhere and tucked it into her tent so that Winry has a place to sleep. Winry has been remarkably quiet since leaving Resembool, even when the Ishvalan kids ran alongside their jeep, shouting questions in a mix of Ishvalan and Amestrian. More Amestrian than Ishvalan, which surprises Ed, although he supposes it shouldn’t. He’s just glad the kids no longer seem to hate him, although maybe it’s just that he’s sitting right next to Al and the automail mechanic who’s here to help them.

“There’s a medical officer,” he tells Winry. “She can probably help you with the surgeries and whatever.”

Winry nods her understanding.

“I’m really glad you decided to come,” Al says. “There are a lot of people that need automail.”  
  
“How many is a lot?” Winry asks cautiously, but Al says he doesn’t know and Ed doesn’t either.

Winry goes over to the hospital tent, pushing both boys away when they attempt to follow her. “I don’t need you to be my shadows, I’m _fine_.”

Ed looks helplessly at Al, but his younger brother just stops where he is and says, “I wouldn’t be much help in a hospital anyway.”

Ed rolls his eyes and follows his brother.

“Ah, Fullmetal. It’s good to have you back.”

Ed turns toward the voice. “Lieutenant Colonel. I didn’t realize you’d miss me.”

Mustang shrugs. “Come on. We’ve got to fill out the inspection report and send it back to Central.”

“You want me to help you with your paperwork?”

“It’s equally yours. This assignment was given to both of us, remember? Besides, I want to hear your opinions.”

Ed shrugs. Mustang’s never quite asked for his opinion before, unless you count having him interview the kid back in Central. He starts walking with the Lieutenant Colonel and is surprised when he realizes they’re heading back to their sleeping tent instead of the command tent.

“It’s like I said, Edward,” Mustang says, as he pushes open the flap of their tent. “I want your honest opinion.”

“And you think it’s not safe to voice that in public?”

“I’m not sure. Colonel Gloster seems decent enough, but... “

“But he shot a kid. Or, I mean, Lieutenant Trapper did, but…”  
  
Roy nods. He wonders if Hughes knew what he was sending them into. He scratches the back of his neck, and sighs. “I think the conditions of this camp are balanced on a fragile thread. The Ishvalans are… beaten down. They have had everything taken from them. And sometimes, when people are truly desperate…”

Ed nods. He gets the point.

He closes his eyes and sees blood on his hands, on the ground, his thumb desperately tracing a seal inside a suit of armor as he screams in unbearable agony, the world flashing white and black as he begged for release or forgiveness or freedom from pain. He’d babbled Al’s name until it lost all meaning. He tried to make a deal with whatever… God (but he doesn’t believe in God) existed beyond the circle he’d drawn, offering himself in place of Al. But nothing answered. The Gate was already closed.

He’s breathing so fast he can’t get any air. Tears sting his eyes.

“Edward?” Mustang asks cautiously. He puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder and Edward pulls away violently.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Okay.”

Mustang watches as Ed stares at nothing (what he’s really doing is staring very carefully at whatever his eyes land on, describing the minute details, grounding himself. Mustang understands that.) His breathing eventually slows. He glances back at Roy. “I’m good,” he growls. “Come on, let’s get this done.”

Mustang isn’t sure, but after Ed asks a second time, he bites his lip and pulls out the inspection report, along with the military code they’re supposed to be checking the conditions of the camp against.

“Adequate food and water?” he reads.

Ed lays down on his cot and looks at the ceiling while he talks. “Yeah, I mean… I guess. It’s not very good food, is it? It’s all just like… rice. And canned meat.”

“Still, it’s not like they’re going to be able to grow anything here.”

Ed sits up. “Well, how did the Ishvalans feed themselves before the war?”

“I have no idea,” Roy admits.

“Did anyone think to _ask_ them?”

Roy scribbles that yes, the Ishvalan refugees have access to adequate food and water, and he looks down at the next question.

“Access to medical care?”

“No,” Ed answers immediately. Roy frowns. “I had to bring Winry here because the military said these people had to live without automail for no reason!”

“But did anyone _die_ for lack of care?” Roy clarifies.

“Is that what the question says?”

“That’s what the question says.”

“Whatever,” Ed mutters.

Roy fills in his response, stating the facts as plainly as he can. Life-threatening illness and injury is treated, but quality of life is apparently not viewed as a concern. He tries to phrase it diplomatically. He glances at Ed and wonders if letting the adolescent’s belligerence seep into his report is worth the trouble it might bring.

“What’s the next question?” Ed asks.

“Is the physical safety of the refugees provided for?”

Ed blows out a breath. “I mean… there’s a bunch of soldiers with guns watching everybody all the time. Does that mean that they’re safe or that they aren’t?”

Roy writes: physical safety of both the refugees and the Amestrian soldiers stationed in the camp is a top priority. However, there is a fine line between security and oppression, and we must take care not to cross it.

They move on to other questions: Are the women provided with the opportunity for meaningful work? (some are, but most aren’t, and as far as Roy can tell, everything in the camp runs on a barter economy.) Do the children have access to education? (not formally, but they’re clearly learning _something_ from the occupying army. Half of them claim not to understand their own language.) Have the refugees been provided with any timetable for repatriation to their own country, or provided with a legal means of immigrating into any other country? ( _No_ , Roy writes.)

“They don’t really have a country to go back to,” Ed points out. Roy nods.

These camps can’t last forever. They are balanced on _such_ a fragile thread. The thirteen-year-old who’d come at him with a knife had cleared the age bar when he got here, but he grew up, bitter and angry, and there are hundreds like him. If they’re not careful, another war could ignite. Roy can’t even say that Amestris wouldn’t deserve it, but… the second time around, he thinks most State Alchemists would refuse to fight. He would, and damn the consequences. And the tide of public opinion wouldn’t be with the Fuhrer this time. Roy knows most Amestrians see the Ishvalans as people to be feared if not hated, but even so, they won’t accept the wholesale slaughter of women and children. At least, not if they can’t plausibly deny that it’s happening.

Roy seals the report into an envelope and sets it aside. “What do you think we should do?” he asks Edward.

The boy shrugs. “Has anyone asked the Ishvalans what they want? Maybe they just want to be left alone.”

“You truly don’t fear retaliation?”

“The kids are half-Amestrian. At least all the ones younger than three. Some of the older ones. Let them settle in Amestris. If you hold them here, you’re just reminding them of all the reasons why they _should_ fight.”

“You might be right.”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty smart, Mustang.”

“Pretty cocky, too.”

“You wanted my opinion.”

“I know. And for what it’s worth... I think it’s not a bad one.”

Ed snorts and closes his eyes. “Hey, Mustang?”

“Yeah?”

“If the inspection’s done, does that mean we get to go home?”

“Not yet. Not for another month or two at least.” Ed rolls his eyes. “The report has to make it to Central, then a report has to be sent _back_ , then Command has to give new orders, and transport has to be arranged, and…”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. I get the point.”

“Anyway, you’ll want to give Ms. Rockbell as much time as possible to do her work, won’t you?”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“I’ll send this out on the next mail truck. You’ve got a stint on the watchtowers soon, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ pointless as it is.”  
  
“Practice your alchemy,” Mustang suggests. “Try something you don’t normally try. Water, maybe, or-”

“Fire?”

“You got a lighter?”

“I can get one.”

“Then sure, try fire. I’m curious to see how it works for you.”

* * *

A couple of hours later, Ed is sitting at the top of the watchtower flicking the lighter on and off. He’s trying to figure out how manipulating the little flame will work with his usual clapping thing. (He’s also trying to make sure he doesn’t accidentally light the camp on fire.) After a moment, he holds the lighter between his boots, claps and touches it, and sends a reasonably large burst of flame crashing against the concrete wall. Ed uses his alchemy to suck the oxygen away from the air in a funnel around the flame, quenching it before it can burn him. He grins, and tries again, this time wondering if he can shape the flame enough to aim it through the cut-out window and into the desert night. He manages to get the flame to burst forth, but before he can funnel it down, he hears someone climbing the ladder up into the tower, breaking his concentration. “Fuck,” he hisses, as he quickly claps and pulls the air away from the flame once more. He snaps off the lighter and sticks it in his pocket.

“Winry?” he asks, as she pulls herself over the top rung of the ladder. She half-sits and half-collapses next to him.

“m’okay,” she murmurs. “Just tired.” Automail surgery is complicated, and worse with children. She bites her lip so hard she tastes blood at the memory of the girl’s desperate screams as she worked to connect the ports properly. It took hours, at a level of pain that probably qualifies as torture. She tells herself it’s worth it. Ed says it is. But still.

She shivers as Ed rubs her back, moving his hand up and down her spine. “Winry?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you eat?”

“Not hungry.”

“You have to eat.”

“Will. Later.”

Ed looks like he might protest, but then he nods. “Sure, okay.”

Winry leans against his shoulder. “You were doing alchemy, right?”

“Just experimenting.”

“Show me.”

“It’s… kinda dangerous, Winry. Fire in an enclosed space.” She pouts, and Ed rolls his eyes.

“I’ll show you when my shift is done, okay? Out on the flats.”

“Okay. But what are we supposed to do until you’re shift is done?”

“ _We_?”

“I don’t want to leave, Ed.”  
  
“I don’t think I’m supposed to have a girlfriend up in the watchtower with me.”

Winry stiffens, and then rolls over so she’s got her knees on either side of Ed’s hips. She looks into his eyes. “You called me your girlfriend.”

“I… what? No I didn’t.”

“You totally did!”

“I meant it as a generic term. _Any_ girlfriend. Not specifically you.”

She sits on his legs, her bottom resting on his knees. She puts her hand on his cheek and presses her lips to his. Ed squirms and rolls until she falls off of him and lands hard on her hip and elbow. “That’s not fair!” he cries.

“We’ve kissed before.”

“Because you ambushed me that time too!”

“Does that mean you don’t want to kiss me, Edward?”

“No. I mean… whatever. We can kiss if you want to.”

Winry smiles. Ed sighs. She kisses him again, gently this time, on the cheek. But then he turns his head so that his lips press down on hers, and she opens her mouth a little, and he relaxes into the kiss, and he has to admit that he likes it a lot better this time than he had the first time they’d experimented.

Winry’s fingers tangle into the loose strands at the bottom of Edward’s braid, which is fine at first, but then she actually starts to pull. “Ow. Winry, damn it, stop.” They break apart again. Ed leans back against the watchtower walls.

“Can you even see out the window when you’re sitting like that?” Winry asks. Ed raises an eyebrow. “I mean, you’re supposed to be keeping watch, right? In case there’s an attack or something.”

Ed sighs, and gets to his feet. He has to stand on tiptoe to see out the window (fucking _hell_ ). There’s nothing out there but sand and sky. “No attack,” he reports. “Satisfied?”  
  
Winry rolls her eyes. “Oh yes, very. Whatever would we do without you?”

“Shut up. I didn’t bring you here to make fun of me.”

Winry puts her hands on her hips and stares him down. “You don’t know me very well, do you?”

“I know plenty of things about you,” Ed protests.  
  
“Oh yeah, like what?”

Ed takes a deep breath. He can't remember ever looking into Winry's eyes for this long. Usually, she breaks away almost instantly. Half the time, she throws something at him shortly thereafter. If anything, when she looks at him, she's looking intently and longingly at his automail, not his face. "You cheat at marbles," he says slowly. "And cards. And dice. Really, you just cheat at everything, but everyone pretends you don't. And you love blackberries and honeysuckle. And you used to have an imaginary friend named Fiona but you stopped believing in her when your parents died. You beat up Carver Thomas in second grade but he wouldn't tell anyone who did it so you didn't get it trouble. You know all the constellations. You saved my life."

“Edward?”

“Yeah?”  
  
“I think I want to be your girlfriend.”

Ed smiles. His face flushes red. He's damned sure Al isn't here, he'd never let him hear the end of this.

"Sure," he says, carefully. "I think that would be okay."

They sit there for another hour or so, holding hands and trading mundane stories about what’s been happening in their months apart. When Ed mentions that he’d nearly gotten himself killed by a serial murderer, Winry smacks his shoulder as hard as she possibly can. His skin flushes red through his sleeveless shirt, and it actually stings a little. He kisses her before she can start a lecture, and she melts into a puddle against his chest.

Ed’s replacement, a twenty-year-old Lance Corporal named Bailey, rolls his eyes when he climbs up the ladder and sees them. “You’re too young for sex,” he warns. “And if you have it, be damn sure you use a rubber.”

Ed considers trying to catch the man’s clothes on fire, but he knows his control is not that good yet, so he just settles for rolling his eyes and letting out a sigh of deep exasperation. Winry glares at the man, but she follows Ed down the ladder without complaint.

“Food,” Ed insists. “Then I’ll show you the fire trick.”

They wind up finding Al, who offers them Granny’s stash. Ed and Winry end up splitting a pie, then laying down in the sand, looking up at the sky. Ed sits up, flicks the lighter, launches a fireball into the night. “ _Wow_ ,” Al says. Winry claps.

“I don’t have precision control,” Ed points out. “Not like Mustang.”

“You also don’t have a specialized array.”

Ed looks up. Mustang is trying to look casual, but it’s fucking obvious he’s been following them. Winry watches the Lieutenant Colonel carefully. He sits down on the sand next to the adolescents, looking out into the desert. “I don’t know why you’re surprised to see me, Edward. I did tell you I was curious about what you’d do with fire.”

Ed rolls his eyes. “So you saw, right?”

“My teacher would’ve loved you. Or been terrified by you, I’m not sure.” Ed frowns, not sure what Roy’s getting at. “Do you know how long it took me to throw a flame out from the array? _Months_. You did it on your first try. _Without_ a specialized array.”

Ed shrugs. He’d say it’s not hard, but that just kind of proves Mustang’s point, doesn’t it? “Whatever,” he mutters, unused to anything that might remotely be construed as praise, especially from Mustang. “I’m going to bed. I’m tired.”

Winry looks up at Mustang while Ed storms off toward their tents, Al on his heels. “He’s always been good at alchemy,” she points out. “He could do it since he was four.”

“It really is fascinating to watch him,” Roy admits. His heart squeezes in his chest when he looks at her. “You’re not unimpressive yourself,” he points out. “I’ve never met a twelve-year-old who can perform automail surgery.”

“I had a good teacher. And it gave me something to do after my parents died. I really needed something like that. A productive distraction.”

“You remind me of her,” Roy says. It slips out before he can take it back. Winry’s mouth forms a little ‘o’ of surprise. Roy cringes.

“What do you mean?” Winry asks carefully.

Roy sighs. He rubs at his forehead. He is incredibly conscious of the gun strapped to his leg, the one he said he’d never fire again after he fired it at her parents. Point blank range, their blood pooling on the dirt floor. Clean headshots. Quick and painless. So much better when the alternative was fire.

It seems his entire life is built on orders that he wishes he had disobeyed.

He knows that two Amestrian lives can’t compare to the literally countless numbers of Ishvalan lives he’d ended during the war.

But it’s different when their orphaned daughter is sitting right here in front of him.

(“Don’t ever forget their faces,” Kimblee had said, taunting him with the truth. _Fucking_ Kimblee.)

(“Why do you say ‘comfort’ like it’s a bad thing?” Ed had asked him, innocently.)

“Sarah knew chemistry almost as well as an alchemist,” he tells Winry. He has to work hard to keep his voice steady. “It seemed like she could mix medicines from thin air. There were always shortages, of painkillers, and antibiotics, and anesthesia. But she figured out a way to make it work.” Winry is clinging to his every word. Barely breathing. “I’m not sure I ever saw her sleep. I’ve heard you pull all-nighters like that, as well.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. Her eyes are wide and desperate, begging for more information. She was so young when they died, and they’d come to Ishval years before that.

“She was so kind. To the children, of course, but not just to them. She and Urey treated soldiers from both sides of the conflict. Men and women who had been killing each other in the morning would sleep side by side in her clinic. She kept the peace. And Urey… he had this amazing talent for drawing-”  
  
“I remember,” Winry says, a little louder this time, a little more confident. “He used to send me pictures. Animals, and plants, and portraits of his patients. They were always smiling in the drawings, I remember. Even though they must have been in a lot of pain, to be in a war hospital.”

Winry was a child when her parents died. She probably has no idea that she should have received death benefits, but won’t, because they were executed as traitors. Her grandmother told her they died in the war. Roy could let that be enough.

Is not telling her protecting her feelings, or his?

“What happened?” Winry asks him. He snorts softly. She’s too smart not to ask, not to have to _know_. She’s spent years wondering, probably inventing her own answer to the question. If they were scared (yes), if they were in pain (no. he’d made sure). If she could have somehow stopped it. If she could have stopped them from leaving her at all.

He’s an orphan too, he damned well knows how these thought-spirals work. Madame Christmas always told him to get out of his own head and make himself useful. She also taught him to drink. He knows which advice he’s followed more faithfully over the years.

Roy swallows hard. “Do you know what it means to give aid and comfort to the enemy?” he asks Winry.

“I suppose it means… helping them. Taking care of them.”

“Treating them. Patching up their wounds and sending them home. Our commander, he believed that the Ishvalans your parents were healing were returning to the battlefield, that they posed a threat to the Amestrian soldiers. He ordered your parents to stop treating Ishvalans. They refused. Aid and comfort to the enemy is one of the ways that Amestrian High Command defines treason.”

“So…”

“So they were killed. I… I killed them.”

Winry sits frozen for almost a full minute. Roy almost tries to comfort her. Then she whirls on him. There is cold hatred in her eyes. Roy closes his eyes. He knew he deserved this. She should _hate_ him.

Because his eyes are closed, he doesn’t realize she’s going for the gun in his holster until her hands are already on it.

He looks up at her, holding that gun trained on him, and he finds he can’t even tell her that she shouldn’t do it.

He could say “I had orders,” but what good would that do? He could say “I didn’t want to.” He could tell her that it literally made him sick, that his vomit mixed with their blood in the dirt, that he had held the same gun she is currently holding and almost blown his own brains out. Maybe this is equivalent exchange. Delayed suicide, years after the first aborted attempt.

He finds himself saying “The last thing they thought about was you.”

The gun shakes in Winry’s two-handed grip. Roy holds her gaze. “They said your name. They said they loved you. Urey... he almost changed his mind. He would have stopped caring for Ishvalans if it meant going home to you. But Sarah took his hand and told him that she’d rather their daughter know they died as traitors rather than live as cowards. That’s what I meant, when I said you remind me of her. You have that same fire.” He closes his eyes again. “If you’re going to shoot me,” he murmurs. “Will you do it already?”

She waits for nearly five seconds. Roy is counting his breaths. “I’m not going to shoot you,” she finally says. “I don’t think my parents would have wanted that kind of revenge.”

Roy opens his eyes. Winry puts his gun on the ground.

“I am so sorry,” he whispers.

“Sorry doesn’t take it back,” she tells him coldly. Her hatred hasn’t gone away.

He wishes she would hurt him. He wishes she would scream. She just walks slowly back toward the camp. Doesn’t even look back.

Roy puts his hand on the gun. He still doesn’t pull the trigger, fuck knows why.

* * *

Fullmetal is asleep when Roy returns to the tent, thank God. But for the first time in weeks, Al’s in there too, sitting in the middle of the floor in front of his brother’s bed. His pink eyes track Roy’s movements as the Lieutenant Colonel strips off most of his clothes and slips into bed.

Roy finds himself wondering if Winry had told the armored body what had happened. Does Al now know what Roy had done? Will he tell Edward in the morning? No, Roy decides. If Al knew, he would say something. The younger Elric doesn’t have much patience for schemes and deception.

And, Roy decides, whether or not the Elric’s find out will be Winry’s decision, not his. He has handed the Rockbells' legacy back into her care. He doesn’t want to carry the weight of it anymore. (“They won’t forget _you_ ,” Kimblee reminds him. Fucking. _Hell_.   
  
The Crimson Alchemist had been terrifying, and Roy was all too glad when they locked him up and threw away the key. Although… why was mass slaughter only a war crime when it happened to take out some blonde-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed Amestrians in military uniform alongside the thousands of nameless Ishvalans? Roy had shot Amestrians too. Roy followed orders. Kimblee just liked killing people, and didn’t care who got in his way.

Kimblee had once prematurely detonated a mine before Roy stepped on it. The explosion wiped out half a city block. He had probably saved Roy’s life.

After they picked off the squad of Ishvalan insurgents that set the mine, Kimblee drank out of a flask he didn’t share with Roy and gave him the “don’t forget” speech.

Kimblee had killed over a hundred Amestrian soldiers and maybe more - he didn’t leave bodies, so who could tell - but not one of the Alchemists. Because there were so few of them, or because he had some kind of loyalty after all?)

Roy drinks just enough to let him forget the Crimson Alchemist’s insane laughter, and then he passes out.

When he wakes up, the Elric brothers are gone, but Emma Wright is sitting on Edward’s cot, picking the dirt out of her fingernails with what looks like a very small knife.

“Winry told me what happened to her parents,” she says quietly. She transmutes the knife out of existence, a pile of metallic shards that she brushes into the sand.

Roy gets to his feet. At the moment, he is wearing only his boxers, and he is very conscious of that fact.

“Still no judgment?” he whispers. He finds his pants and shirt, starts pulling them on. It gives him a reason not to look at Major Wright.

“Orders are orders. I’d have done the same thing in your position.”

Roy sighs. “It’s really that simple for you?”

Emma curls her legs up underneath her body and watches Roy’s purposeless pacing .”It’s not for you?” she asks.

“You don’t feel bad?”

Emma breathes out, long and slow. She shakes her head slightly, her (currently unbraided) black hair falling into her eyes. “I never said that.”

Mustang nods. Orders are orders. He feels like there is a rock made out of ice settled in his stomach. He sits down on his cot. He puts his head in his hands and then looks up at Emma. “My friend in Central thought coming back here would be good for me. That it would help me get my head on straight.”

“What do you think?”  
  
“What?”

“Do you think your friend was right?”

Roy lays down again, on his back, looking up at the canvas ceiling. “I think… I needed to see this place as something other than a killing field. There’s… still a lot wrong. But I can see how to fix it.”

Emma frowns. “Fix it?”

“I mean, not undo it, obviously. But we can help these people. I think that’s what Maes thought I should see.”

Emma nods thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Amestris. These people matter too much to me now. I belong here much more than I’ll ever belong in Central.”

“But you didn’t resign.”

“No. Not yet. If they force the choice, I will.”

Roy sighs. He glances over at Emma. “The Ishvalans still hate us,” he points out. “You’ll really spend the rest of your life living among people who don’t trust you?”

“Yes, I will.”

The flap of the tent bursts open, Ed and Al chattering as they come in, the bright sunlight breaking through the dim interior. Roy flinches away from the light. His head pounds. He wonders if he’d had more to drink last night than he remembers.

Ed comes up short when he sees Emma sitting on his bed. His eyes flit from her to Mustang, and a smirk creeps onto his lips. “Sorry,” he drawls. “I’ll just… go. Have fun. Use protection.”

“Elric!” Mustang snaps.

“We were just talking, boys,” Emma insists. She jumps off the cot and pushes past Al to leave the tent.

Ed sits down in the spot she just vacated. “I think it’s good, you and her.”

“We weren’t…” Mustang heaves a heavy sigh. “We really were just talking.”

Ed watches him silently for a long minute, and then he shrugs. “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen you after you’ve had sex. You’re a lot happier than you are right now.”

“Don’t you have somewhere else you should be?”

“I’m supposed to be finding you. Colonel Gloster said you were supposed to be meeting with him like an hour ago. He seemed kinda pissed, Mustang.”

Roy closes his eyes and mutters a “Fuck,” under his breath. He gets up and heads for the entrance of the tent, but Ed grabs his arm.

“You’re probably going to want to brush your teeth first, at least.” Roy rolls his eyes, but takes the suggestion under advisement. He pulls out his little toiletry kit, squeezes toothpaste onto a dry brush and runs it over his teeth before spitting onto the sand. Then he heads out to the command tent.

Fullmetal doesn’t follow him, presumably he’s done his part. Roy scrubs his face with his hands and tries to look presentable.

Colonel Gloster doesn’t even look up as Roy enters the command tent. Roy salutes and waits at attention and finally the colonel acknowledges him. “Lieutenant Colonel.”  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m late, sir, I-”

“Never mind. I want to send a squad out into the desert, hunt down these Ishvalan terrorists. I want you to go with them.”

Roy remembers what Emma had said while they were building the wall, that Gloster might very well be paranoid. He remembers telling Edward that the Ishvalan survivors were desperate. This is a deadly combination. And Roy wants no part of the resulting explosion.   
  
Roy licks his lips. “With all due respect, sir, that’s a terrible idea.”

“What gave you the idea I was asking your opinion, Mustang?”

“Per the terms of the Treaty of Surrender, Amestris won’t send forces past the border.”

“So you think we should just wait here for them to attack us?”

“It’s been over a month since you had us reinforce the wall, sir. There hasn’t been any attack.”

Roy wishes he had Emma here to back him up, or hell, even Elric. Or Riza. He would kill to have Riza at his side.

The Colonel’s eyes are narrowed and his fists are clenched on the tabletop. “I am not asking. I am giving you an order.”

Roy shakes his head. “It’s not a lawful order, sir. I won’t do it.”

“Then get the hell out of my camp.”

“If that’s how you want it, sir,” Roy says, very quietly.

He slips out of the tent and sits just outside of it, stewing. He needs to call Central, needs to let someone in High Command know what’s going on here. Central’s too far away to prevent a disaster if Colonel Gloster is truly determined to spark one, but maybe it’ll be enough just to have someone from High Command shut the man down.

The phone is in the command tent. Obviously.

Roy walks calmly into the tent and picks up the phone, dialing in the number for Central Command.   
“What the hell are you doing?” Gloster snarls.

Roy ignores him. “I need to speak to Brigadier General Grand,” he says into the phone. The voice on the other end is silent for several too-long seconds, then says.  
  
“Brigadier General Grand is dead, Lieutenant Colonel.”  
  
“He’s… what?” Roy says stupidly. But there isn’t time to get into that. “Never mind… just… put me on with whoever’s taken his job, then.”

Gloster is still glaring dangerously at him. Roy holds the phone’s earpiece tucked up against his shoulder and keeps his left hand covering the cradle in case the colonel tries to disconnect the call. His gloved right hand is a weapon he really hopes he doesn’t have to use.

When the new Brigadier General gets on the line, Roy hands Gloster the phone. “He wants to talk to you, sir.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Congratulations, Lieutenant Colonel Wright.”   
  
Emma snorts. “They only promoted me because no one else wants this job.”  
  
“I think that’s probably a good thing,” Roy admits. “At least with you in charge, there’s a chance things can get better.”

Emma nods slowly. “Gloster wasn’t all that bad. I think this place just ate away at him.”

“Yeah,” Roy agrees, staring out at the never-ending sands. “I can see how that could happen.”  
  
Gloster is being transferred somewhere else, where his paranoia can’t break a fragile treaty. Briggs maybe. He might like the cold after years of the desert. Or it might torture him. It’s hard to say.

Roy sits in a different convoy truck than the former commander of the camp and broods. He’d gotten the order to come back to Central over the phone, which means he doesn’t have to wait two months for the mail after all.

“Stay safe, Lieutenant Colonel,” Emma says.

“You too,” Roy replies. He really does mean it.

He turns to see Edward and Winry bickering over near the command tent. He sighs. Fullmetal better get on a truck soon, or they’re going to leave without him. Al climbs up next to Roy. “Brother is coming,” he says, although Roy didn’t ask. The boy inside the suit of armor is surprisingly perceptive.

Roy settles back in the seat and wonders why he feels oddly guilty about leaving. He’d never wanted to come here in the first place. He definitely never meant to stay.

Ed and Winry are starting to make their way toward the convoy, finally.

“So you really are leaving,” Roy hears Winry say. She manages to make it sound like an accusation.

“Yeah, I have to,” Ed protests. “I mean… you always knew I was going to. Al and I have to look for the Philosopher’s Stone, we have to-”

“Shut up, Ed,” Winry demands. She presses her lips to his and pushes him up against the side of the jeep. He melts under her touch. When Winry comes up for air, Ed realizes that he too is panting for breath. He grins at her, like an idiot, until he realizes that she’s glaring at him. He avoids looking at her.

“I mean… you could come too,” he mutters, to the ground. Winry smacks his chest, just above the heart. Hard. He rubs at it, eyes wide. “I was just _saying_ ,” he protests.

“Automail recovery takes years, Ed, you know that. And they’ll need maintenance. I have to stay.”

“I never meant… I never thought you’d stay here without me.”

Winry rolls her eyes. “That’s because you didn’t think it _through_ , Edward. You never do.”

She only calls him Edward when she’s trying to prove how _right_ she is. It drives him insane.

“I told Granny I’d protect you,” he protests weakly.

“I don’t need your protection.”

Ed looks helplessly at Mustang, of all things. “What do you think I’m going to be able to do?” Roy asks.

Ed sighs dramatically and climbs up onto the jeep and they start to drive away, and he won’t let himself tell Winry that he’s going to miss her. Whatever. She’ll be fucking _fine_. She promised.

* * *

Hours through the desert sands, bouncing up and down on trucks with ill-designed suspensions. A train station in Resembool. Not enough time to have to explain to Granny why Winry’s not with them, for which Ed is truly grateful. A layover in East City. They spend the night in a hotel. Ed listens to Mustang snoring softly. Al’s armor clanks when he moves. He doesn’t move a lot.

Ed doesn’t remember falling asleep but then Mustang’s waking him up with sleep-clouded eyes and two paper cups of coffee. He forgot the sugar Ed likes in his. Bastard. The bitterness of the black brew makes Ed wince. He sips it anyway, slowly.

Mustang has a conversation with some General from East Command while Ed and Al loiter on the steps of the building, bored. Ed stretches, yawns, at gets to his feet. Al takes notice. “Where’re you going, brother?”

“Nowhere. I’m just taking a walk.”

“But the Lieutenant Colonel said-”

“That he’d be right back, and that was like an hour ago, Al. I’m hungry. I’m going to find something to eat.”

Al gets to his feet to, but Ed shakes his head. “One of us has gotta stay here in case Mustang really does come looking.”  
  
“Ed…”

“I’m just going right there!” Ed says, waving his hand toward the street just past East Command’s courtyard. “Look, you can _see_ the food stalls.”

Al looks worried and reluctant (somehow. How does Al look _anything_ , without facial expressions?) “Okay… Come right back, though.”

Ed nods. He jumps down the steps, his body needing to move after sitting still for so long. On the train. On the steps. In an hour or so, they’ll be on the train _again_. Ed rolls his shoulder and stretches his flesh and blood arm across his body, trying to work out the kinks.

He buys a bag of candied nuts from a middle-aged man who nearly drops the bag onto the dirt trying to give it to Ed, because he’s distracted by a radio broadcast. Ed frowns. He snatches the bag out of the man’s hands and leaves his cenz on the wooden boards that constitute a counter. The man is still smiling happily, despite the scowl on Ed’s face. “Do you hear that?” he asks. “They say that priest in Liore is capable of bringing people back to life. Isn’t that wonderful!” He claps his hands excitedly. “It’s a miracle!”

Ed freezes. “Nobody can bring people back to life,” he growls. “It’s impossible.”

“I just heard it!” the man demands, waving toward the radio.

“Whatever,” Ed hisses, recoiling as if the man’s enthusiasm physically hurts him. He takes his bag of nuts and tromps heavily back toward the steps where Al is waiting. Lieutenant Colonel Mustang is coming down those same steps. Fucking finally. Mustang takes a glance at the treat in Ed’s hand.

“Planning to share?”

Ed rolls his eyes.

They start walking to the train station, with Al following behind. Ed lets Al sit next to the window without even a token protest this time. “Hey, Mustang,” he says, as Roy sits down. “Have you heard anything about this guy resurrecting people in Liore?”

“That’s just a story, Fullmetal.” But he pauses too long before he says it. He _did_ know. And he was hiding it from Ed. _Bastard_.

“Is that what you and the General were talking about?”

Roy sighs heavily. “Among other things,” he admits.

“So we’re going to Liore, right?”

“We’re going to Central,” Mustang points out, eyebrow raised. The train rolls along its tracks. Toward Central. Away from Liore.

“But-” Roy stretches and settles in against his seat, trying way too hard to act like this conversation means nothing to him. He picks up a newspaper someone had left on the seat next to him. “ _Mustang_!” Ed demands.

“If you want to request leave from your commanding officer to go to Liore, Fullmetal, feel free.” He turns the page of the newspaper.

Ed grinds his teeth. “Mustang?”

“What?”

“ _You’re_ my commanding officer.”

Roy raises an eyebrow. “So?”

“So… can I go to Liore?”

* * *

“You’re sending them off to an unknown city by themselves, sir?” Riza asks quietly.

“I’ll call in a favor at East Command. Someone can shadow them.” The two of them watch the Elric brothers’ train pull out of the station. Ed hadn’t even wanted to stop at the barracks to get fresh clothes or anything. It was almost like he was afraid Mustang would change his mind if given sufficient time.

Roy reaches over to take Riza’s hand. “I’ve missed you,” he murmurs.

“I’ve missed you too,” she says neutrally.

Roy growls with frustration. “Riza,” he demands. “No one at the train station is going to care if we-”

But she’s already shaking her head. “A lot’s happened while you’ve been gone. You need to get to Central Command.” Her voice carries the weight of authority so much better than his. He’s already nodding.

“Fine,” he says, already exhausted. He follows her to the car.

“Can you give me any sufficient warning of what to expect?” he asks, as Riza confidently navigates the streets of Central.

“There’s a serial killer targeting State Alchemists.”

Roy nearly chokes. “How long were you planning to go without telling me this?”

“Not long, Roy. You’d have found out at Headquarters anyway.”

“So Brigadier General Grand…”

“Was the first victim. Nearly three months ago.”

“And how many since?”

“Three.”

“Riza…”

“Hughes is leading the investigation, but he’ll be really glad to have your help. He’s not an alchemist so he feels like there’s not a lot he can do.”

“He should have access to plenty of alchemists.”

“He does. But none of them are you.”

Roy nods his understanding as Riza parks the car outside of Headquarters. She walks around to open Roy’s door for him, which is never necessary but is apparently some form of protocol, so he has stopped uselessly protesting. He gets out and looks up at the building. It seems to have grown even larger and more intimidating in his absence.

Hughes is in the Investigations office, throwing crime scene photos down onto the large table in the center of the room, arranging and rearranging them as if he can make some new sense of the images by putting them in a different order. He doesn’t even look up when Roy slips into the room.

Roy glances at the photos near Hughes’ left hand, and winces. “It looks like he just… exploded,” he says quietly.

“Roy. When did you get here?”

“Just now. Riza told me what’s going on.”

Hughes nods, looking more overwhelmed than Roy thinks he’s ever seen him. He’s tempted to ask his friend when he last ate or slept. Or showered. Or saw his wife or kid. Instead he looks down at the pictures on the table, picking one up at random.

“That was the Freezing Alchemist. He was the most recent victim. That was four days ago.”

The killing took place in a narrow alleyway. There is blood and viscera painting the walls, puddled on the ground… there is no body _left_.

“Are we absolutely certain the Crimson Alchemist is still in jail?” Roy demands.

“It’s not like I visit him,” Hughes points out. Roy just _looks_ at him. “ _Yes_ , he’s still in jail. Come on, Roy, that was the first thing we checked.”

“Has anybody talked to him?”

“About what? Methods of killing?”

“Well, you’re looking for a murderer, right?” Hughes narrows his eyes. “He might talk to me. He’s got some kind of weird loyalty to Alchemists. Or at least he did during the war.”

Hughes blinks. If he had some weird loyalty to Alchemists, why would he have anything to do with killing them now? He scrubs his hands through his hair and wishes he could just make this make sense. “Watch your back,” he insists. “Take Hawkeye with you.”

Roy nods, but he knows he won’t take that advice. Kimblee is a jealous man. Any conversation they have will have to be one on one.

He waits until the sun is almost setting before he heads over to the prison. It won’t matter underground, but in Ishval, Kimblee was more likely to be honest at night. And less likely to be homicidal. Roy will take any advantage he can get.

The entrance to the prison is a small, depressing room: a little cage behind which sits a desk and a telephone, a man in the uniform of the military police sitting behind it. The lights above them are flickering as though the bulbs might die any minute.

The officer looks up. Then stands up, salutes. “Lieutenant Colonel Mustang!” (He says it in the way that makes Roy certain this is one of those men who thinks he’s a war hero. He has to work not to grind his teeth. Or sigh heavily. Or reach for a non-existent drink.) The police captain puts his hand down, and frowns. “Sorry, I didn’t know… no one told me to expect you.”

“I want to see Kimblee,” Mustang says. The captain raises an eyebrow, but Roy has the authorization, so he can’t deny the request.

“Be careful, sir,” the man does warn.

Roy gives a grunt of acknowledgement. He follows a guard down into the cold stone basement of Central’s Second Prison. He hears dripping water, broken crying, an occasional animal howl. “What are they screaming about?” he asks carefully.

“Who knows? Most of the prisoners in here aren’t quite right in the head. And the Crimson Alchemist, he’s the worst of them all.”

“I’m aware,” Roy says, very softly.

Kimblee’s eyes look clear enough when he looks up at Roy, though. A sly smile spreads across his face. “Well, well. What have we here?”

His hands are restrained in a way that completely prevents him from using his alchemy, but even in the dim light, Roy can clearly see the tattoos imprinted on his palms. And even without alchemy, he is a very dangerous man.

“I wanna talk to you,” Roy says. His voice is a harsh whisper.

Kimblee laughs, and the sound echoes off the close walls of the cell, sending a shiver down Roy’s spine. “I have missed our little chats.”

Roy thinks Kimblee sounds perfectly rational. He thinks this is what makes it most likely that the Crimson Alchemist is insane. “Why’d you do it, Kimblee? Why’d you kill those people?”

“ _Which_ people? You’re gonna have to be a little more specific, Flame.”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Roy snaps. Kimblee just grins. He holds Roy’s gaze steady, not intimidated in the least. He never is. “Why did you kill Amestrian soldiers?” he clarifies.

Kimblee shrugs. “You were there at my court martial. Answer’s the same.”

“You did it because you could.” Roy says, repeating what Kimblee had told the officers at his trial. He shakes his head. “I don’t believe you.”  
  
“It’s not my fault what you believe.” Kimblee licks at his lips, his tongue moving slowly over them, almost sensuously. He grins at Roy. "You're insufferable. You know that, right? All pretentious and noble and so damn _guilty_. It’s a shame you never let yourself have any real fun. We had such a good partnership, during the war.”

"We did not have a partnership,” Roy spits out through clenched teeth. “You and I are nothing alike. You _disgust_ me." Kimblee raises an eyebrow. He glances at the array stitched into Roy's glove.

Roy pulls it out of sight and tucks it under his other arm. "Fuck you,” he snaps.

Kimblee laughs again. He shakes his head, and his tangled and matted hair falls over his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?” he asks lazily.

Roy closes his eyes, hating the fact that he has to be here asking _Kimblee_ for help. But he did come here for a reason. “Someone’s been killing State Alchemists,” he sighs. “Exploding them from the inside out.”  
  
Kimblee grins his sickening grin, and chuckles. “So naturally, you assumed it was me. Hate to disappoint, Flame, but I’ve been stuck in here.”

“And you’ve never killed your own.”  
  
The Crimson Alchemist’s eyes narrow, but he tilts his head in a half-nod, conceding Roy’s point. “And that.”

Roy raises an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected to Kimblee to admit to that. The idea that he considered Alchemists to be worth protecting was just a theory, one Roy had hoped was true but couldn’t confirm.   
  
“Is there anyone else who knows how to do what you do?”

“Not that I know of. But you know what they say: Anything that can be made can be unmade.”

Roy only has to think about that for a few seconds. “You’re a genius,” he whispers, and Crimson laughs.

* * *

“I know what they’re doing.”

“Roy-”

“They’re stopping at the second stage.” He looks up at Hughes, wild and excited. “We’ve been thinking of it as an alchemic reaction, something you _combine_ , like what Crimson does. But it isn’t. It’s a deconstruction.”

Hughes frowns. He knows only the very basics of alchemy, and Roy’s explanations are capable of quickly going over his head. “And knowing this helps us how?”

Roy sighs. “I dunno… I guess it doesn’t really. But it doesn’t… no alchemist I know would _think_ that way.” He’s seen Edward Elric deconstruct, multiple times. But Edward’s alchemy has always been non-traditional, and not even for a second can Roy imagine that that boy is a serial killer, even if he hadn’t been in Ishval for the last several months.

Hughes glances yet again at the crime scene photos spread out on the table. “So you’re saying we’re looking for an alchemist that’s not an Alchemist. Someone who was never trained by the state.”

“I’d argue someone who was never trained in Amestris at all.”

“Well. That does narrow the options, doesn’t it?”

“It means we won’t have a record of them. They could be anywhere.” Hughes nods. He looks so fucking _tired_. “Go home, Maes.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
“Just for a couple of hours. I’ll take the heat. I’ll make it an order.”  
  
“You’re not my C.O.”

“ _Go_ _home_. You’re useless like this. I’ll go talk to Madame, try to get some intel.”

Roy really thinks Hughes is going to continue fighting him, but after another several long seconds his friend finally gives in and nods. “You call me the second you get anything, Roy. I mean it. The second you know _anything_ -”

“I will.”

Hughes nods again, running his hands through his short hair. “Stay safe, Mustang. If this guy’s targeting Alchemists…”

“I’ll have Riza with me.” Hughes nods, although he still looks worried. Hawkeye is formidable, but she’s still just one person. “I’ll be fine,” Roy promises.

Hughes almost orders a pair of sergeants to guard Mustang. Only the fact that he knows that Madame Christmas’ bar is one of the safest places in the city stops him. “Just be careful,” he pleads, very quietly.

“I’m always careful, Hughes,” Roy insists.


	9. Chapter 9

Gracia’s already asleep by the time Maes gets home. Frizia’s curled up against her, snoring softly. She sleeps much better with Gracia then without, so it’s not surprising to find her here, especially on a night that he probably wasn’t expected to be home. Maes smiles. They haven’t got the adoption paperwork finalized yet - Maes knows perfectly well how the government handles paperwork, and knows that it might take years - but as far as he’s concerned Frizia is just as much his daughter as Elicia is.

Elicia’s sleeping peacefully in her cradle at the foot of the bed. Maes checks, and checks again. He puts his hand next to her mouth so he can feel the warmth of her breathing.

The he climbs into bed, without even bothering to undress. He tries to do it without waking Gracia. Frizia can sleep through anything.

“Maes…” Gracia mumbles, as he pulls the sheets over his head. Shit.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I missed you.”

She turns away from Frizia to reach out for him. “Missed you, too,” he says softly. He kisses her, long and slow and deep. She melts under his touch. Maes feels a heat spreading out from his core. But he has to sleep. Mustang’s right about at least that much.   
  
“Are you-?”

“Can’t stay long. A few hours, tops.”  
  
“Oh,” Gracia says, disappointed. She’s used to the nature of his work, but times like this he seriously contemplates handing in his resignation and working a 9-to-5 in some civilian office.

Gracia drapes her arm over him as he closes his eyes. He’s out within a minute. 

* * *

“Roy-boy!”   
She’s already stepping out from behind the bar and holding her arms out to wrap him up in a hug. Roy bites his lip and flushes with embarrassment. “I’m not _four_ , Aunt Chris.”

She snorts. “Sit down. Is this a drunk conversation or a sober conversation?”  
  
“I need information.”  
  
Chris rolls her eyes. “Why don’t you ever just stop by to say hello?” She pours them both drinks and hands him one of the glasses. Roy takes a slow sip. “Your girlfriend doesn’t have to hide in the corner, you know. Is she scared of me?”

Roy cracks a smile. “Probably. But she won’t take a drink even if you offer and she’ll tell you she wants to keep an eye on the room.”

“She’s smart. She’s good for you.”  
  
“I didn’t come here to discuss my relationship.”

“You allow me so little fun, Roy-boy.”

Roy lets a little bit more of the liquor slide down his throat. “Someone’s killing Alchemists.”

“Your military’s scared, eh?”

Roy blinks. “Aren’t you?”

“Should I be?” He just frowns. “I taught you to defend yourself, and that was before you could set a city block on fire with a snap of your fingers.” His frown deepens. Chris can practically _see_ the the guilt draped over him like a blanket. She sighs. “I didn’t mean… you know I wasn’t talking about the war.”  
  
“I know you weren’t,” he mutters, as he knocks back the rest of his drink. It’s just… she wasn’t, but she was. It’s too close to true. Hits too close to home. Chris refills his glass without prompting, and Roy lets her even though he knows he has to stay clear-headed tonight. “We’re thinking the killer’s an alchemist, but not Amestrian,” he says, hoping to quickly steer the conversation back in a direction that won’t touch Ishval.

Chris frowns thoughtfully. “There can’t be too many people who fit that description.”

“Do you know of anyone that does?”

“There’s some Xingese girl hanging around the embassies.”

“That doesn’t seem likely…”  
  
“You didn’t say _likely_ , you said fit the description.”

“I know.” Roy sighs heavily. “Just… see what you can find out, will you?”

“I always do, kid.”

* * *

Roy blinks in surprise when he walks into his apartment. He knew Riza had the key, he’d given it to her before he left, but he wasn’t prepared for her to come in here and clean up his mess. It makes him feel vaguely guilty. It also makes the place not feel like his.

He sits down on the couch and rubs at closed eyes with the heels of his hands. He should sleep. It’s been a hell of a day and tomorrow is likely to be worse. But although he’s physically drained, his mind is far too keyed up to settle easily. He rummages around in his kitchen until he finds a mostly empty bottle of whiskey, and he lets the dregs of it slide down his throat without bothering with a glass. He has to be careful. He’s already too far past the edge of sober, and knows it. But he just can’t seem to bring himself to stop.

He’s been laying on his couch, brooding on the Alchemist-killer for nearly an hour when a knock on his door breaks the quiet. He opens it carefully after checking the peephole to see who it is. “Riza.” She shuts the door behind her and kisses him, with surprising heat. “I thought… weren’t you going home to take care of Hayate? Why are you here?” He’s still caught in that bizarre middle between awake and exhausted. Everything seems slow and muddled.

Riza frowns up at him. “We haven’t seen each other in months, Roy,” she points out. She sounds wounded. Roy leans down to kiss her, again, but this time it’s just the quick brush of his lips over hers, only a second or two before he breaks away.

“I’m not saying I don’t want you here,” he insists. “Of course I want you here, Riza, I-”

“Shut up, Roy.” He bites his tongue.

She pushes him toward the couch. Then she’s straddling him and kissing his neck and peeling off his shirt, and he’s letting her do all this without protest. It’s not until she’s started unzipping his pants that his mind checks back in. Or tries to. “Riza, I…”

“Shut _up_ , Roy.”

“I have to get-” She leans down to kiss him, to silence him. She bites. He pushes her off of him as gently as he is able. “Riza, I have to get a condom.”

Her eyes widen a little bit. “Right. Yeah, ‘course, Roy.” Fuck.

He gets up and heads to his bedroom. He’s just returning, ripping the packaging open with his teeth, when the phone rings. He catches Riza’s eye, and she shakes her head slightly, but when the phone rings a second time, she just sighs. Roy answers the phone.

“This better be important, Hughes.”

“There’s been another one.”

Roy stays silent for several seconds. “Right,” he finally says. “I’ll meet you at HQ.”

Riza’s already straightened her clothing and checked her gun and has that familiar look of determination on her face. She hands Roy his shirt and waits while he pulls it on and zips his pants. “Tonight’s not over,” he insists, and she nods. But both of them know they’ll be lucky to have a moment of down time before the next evening. If then.

Headquarters is bustling despite the lateness of the hour. Mustang grabs a cup of coffee from the pot that’s been installed in the Investigations office. He swallows the hot liquid and almost burns the back of his throat. Hughes glances up from the far end of the room, where he’s working on taping the various pictures and reports that used to be on the table in some pattern that Roy is not aware of.

Roy meets Hughes’ eyes and then crosses the room. “What happened?” he asks quietly.

“Tucker was here in Central to renew his certification. He was killed on the steps of the library.”

“The _library_? That’s damn close, Maes.”

“Yeah. High Command is transferring to East until this all blows over.”

“That’s no pressure at all.”

“Your aunt didn’t know anything, huh?”

Roy shakes his head. “No. Whoever this is, they’re good at covering their tracks.”

“Well, we’ll have to turn up something soon, won’t we? Come on.”

Roy follows Maes out to one of the military cars, even though it’s easy enough to walk to the library. Somehow walking alone on the darkened streets doesn’t feel like a good idea, now.

The crime scene is just as grisly as all the previous ones. Roy stands there at the bottom of the steps while Hughes’ team takes photographs and writes down notes. Someone’s turned on a floodlight, which bathes the whole area in white light as bright as a sun.

“Tucker’s daughter is missing as well,” Hughes tells Roy quietly. “She’s only four years old.”

“You don’t think she’s been killed, too?”

“I don’t know what to think. I hope that’s not the case, but we just don’t know, do we?”

Roy takes a deep breath. He stares at the gory remains of Shou Tucker and tries to make sense of what he’s seeing. “There’s no circle,” he finally realizes.

“What?”

“If the killer’s using alchemy, there should be a transmutation circle.” Even if the blood has covered up most of it, there should be some evidence that it was there. After conferring with the rest of the Investigations team, it becomes clear that none of the other murder scenes had shown evidence of a circle either.

“Maybe they’ve got it on their body somewhere,” Maes muses. “Most of you guys do, right?”

“But that’s the kind of thing that’s hard to hide. If we know we’re looking for someone - a non-Amestrian - with an array tattooed on their skin, that’s easy to look for. Even in a city with this many people in it, that’s noticeable.”

Hughes nods. “I’ll put out an alert. Have the civilian police start looking, too.”

“Have there been any witnesses? Maybe someone saw something.”

“So far, the killer’s been incredibly lucky, being able to find his victims when they’re alone. You Alchemists are a very independent sort. But starting now, you won’t be allowed to go wandering off without an escort.”

“There are gonna be people who aren’t happy about that.”

“I imagine they’ll be less happy being dead, Roy.”

Roy blows out a long breath. “Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

Hughes makes sure his team from Investigations is going to thoroughly canvas the neighborhood despite the late hour, hoping they can get some kind of clue on a possible suspect. Roy follows him back toward the car when he's finished.

He slows down as they turn the corner, looking back over his shoulder. There, in the alleyway across the street… he sees a shape, a shadow… He snaps his fingers.

Fire flares up in the alleyway, and Hughes is already throwing one of his knives. But then the fire…. disappears. Roy’s already running, and he’s close enough now to see the unmistakable shape of a man, as well as the unmistakable flash of light that accompanies a transmutation.

The light dies away, but enough of the man’s jacket has burned away that Roy can see that his entire right arm is swirling with alchemical tattoos. They don’t look like anything Roy’s ever seen, but their purpose is unmistakable. Roy lifts his hand to snap again, and then the man looks at him. He’s wearing dark-tinted glasses despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night. “Flame Alchemist,” he says.

“Who are you?” Roy asks.

“Sir!” one of the police sergeants yells. “Get out of the way.” Roy takes a few steps back, and the police officer shoots at the man in the alley. One, two, three times, in quick succession.

The red light of alchemy flares again. Wait… _red_ light?

Mustang takes a few cautious steps into the alleyway. The man tilts his head back and tries to get to his feet, but he’s bleeding profusely and he doesn’t have the strength. He reaches out toward Roy with his tattooed arm and says something in a language that Roy recognizes, although he doesn’t speak it. He freezes.

“Roy, move!” Hughes yells. Roy looks back at him, but doesn’t move. 

The man on the ground is half-crawling, half-dragging himself toward the sewer grate at the end of the alleyway. His dark glasses slip off his face, revealing blood-bright eyes reflected in the street-light.

Roy lets him go.

Half-hearted gunfire peppers the alleyway, but Roy is still standing in the middle of it and no one wants to risk hitting him. If Riza was here, she could make the shot, but she isn’t.

Most of the Investigations Department is watching him warily. Roy knows he fucked this up, but…

He walks over to Hughes. His friend puts his arm around him and ducks his head so they can conference. “He’s Ishvalan, Maes,” Roy says heavily. His friend nods, and blows out a breath. “ _Fuck_ ,” Roy insists.


	10. Chapter 10

Ed is rolling his eyes so hard Al wonders if it actually hurts. “Stupid religious freaks,” Ed mutters under his breath. “There’s no such thing as _miracles_ , it’s all just alchemy, right? Alchemy and stories. They have to be making this stuff up.”  
  
“Brother…” Al says. Sing-song. Warning. Al isn’t any more religious than Ed is, but he does believe in being polite. There’s nothing to be gained from disparaging these people’s beliefs right in front of them.

Ed looks up at him and heaves a hugely dramatic sigh. “Come on. We might as well go meet this priest guy. If he’s doing anything close to what they’re saying he is, he must have a Philosopher’s Stone, don’t you think?”

Al stops walking suddenly. It takes Ed a moment to realize it and turn back. “Al?”

His brother is standing frozen while a man nearly as tall has he is shakes his hand enthusiastically. The man is extremely muscular, bald except for a curl of blonde hair falling into his face, and wearing a military uniform. Ed scowls. “Who the hell are you?”

The man pulls himself away from Al and places his hands on his hips, standing proudly. “ _I_ am Major Alex Louis Armstrong!”

Ed raises an eyebrow. “Congratulations?”

“Brother…” Al warns.

“What d’you want, Major?”

“I’ve been assigned to serve as your bodyguard.” It almost sounds like Armstrong’s laughing. At the very least, he’s got a huge grin on his face. He’s _happy_ about this.

Ed scowls. “I don’t need a fucking bodyguard.”

“Partner, then. Would that be better?”

Ed raises an eyebrow, considering the question. “You’re an Alchemist, right?”

“Indeed.”

“Do you know anything about the Philosopher’s Stone?”

Armstrong frowns, looking thoughtful. “We used them during the war. Mine was taken, of course.”

“Were there a lot of them? During the war? Is it possible this Father Cornello guy could’ve got hold of one?”

“I suppose anything's possible. But the Military kept very close track of them.”

Ed scowls. He keeps his eyes open and alert, looking for any sign of alchemy or trickery. But so far all he sees is a large crowd of people gathering in a sort of courtyard thing in front of a building that looks surprisingly similar to military HQ. “It's not really the kind of place you'd expect to find a priest, is it?”

A young woman with brown hair tied back in a tail comes up to them, a warm smile on her face. Her eyes land on Armstrong first. “We don't get many soldiers coming to pray.”

Ed rolls his eyes, but Al puts a hand on his shoulder before he can say anything that he might later regret.

Armstrong smiles at the girl, and doesn’t contradict her assumption. He crosses his arms over his chest and watches as the priest - the girl says his name is Cornello - puts his hands over a dead bird held in a young girl’s hands. There’s a flash of red light, and then the crowd gasps as the bird soars into the sky. Edward Elric glares, hot enough to melt steel.

“Maybe the bird was sick,” Al says quietly. “Just sick, and not dead. It’s hard to see from here. It might’ve still been alive.”

“Even still…” Ed mutters. If alchemy could fix sickness... He bites his lip, hard enough to taste blood. “We have to figure out what’s going on here.”

He pulls away from Al, Armstrong, and Rose, trying to push his way through the crowd to get to the priest. But Cornello is already turning away, heading back into the doorway behind him on the balcony. By the time Ed reaches the front of the courtyard, the priest is no longer there.

He clenches his flesh-and-blood fist and looks around. The crowd is still milling about, although it does appear to be dissolving.

“Don’t worry, Little Brother,” says the woman who had welcomed them. “Father Cornello will help you find what you’re seeking, I know he will. Come, you can stay in the Pilgrim’s Quarters.”

Ed raises an eyebrow at Armstrong. The older Alchemist just shrugs. Finally, Ed nods. If they stay in the same building as the priest, they can go looking for the Stone.

“How did you know we’re seeking something?” Al asks.

The young woman shrugs. “All of the pilgrims who come to Liore are seeking something.”

She leads them to a small dorm with four beds in it. Ed sits down on one. Armstrong takes another, diagonally across from him. Al stands in the middle of the room, between them.

The woman slips out of the room, leaving them alone.

Ed watches Armstrong. The older man sits on the bed, looking comfortable even though he seems far too large for its small frame. “How come I’ve never heard of you?” Ed asks.

“Well, you’ve been in Central, right? I have been stationed in the Eastern District for many years.”

“Mustang says the Eastern District is where they dump people who won’t ever make anything of themselves.”

Armstrong laughs softly. “Oh, really?”

“So, is it true?”  
  
“Brother, you’re being rude.”

Armstrong studies Ed with piercing blue eyes. “I’m sure you know that we State Alchemists are also officers in the Military.”  
  
“Yeah…”

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at war. I have been called a coward - and many worse things - because of my actions during the Rebellion in Ishval. I was discharged - dishonorably - because I could not do as ordered on the battlefield.” He really does seem to regret it. Ed figures Armstrong is a person who really cares about honor. But still...

“Mustang said all the Alchemists who didn't fight got shot.”

Armstrong flushes a little bit. He’s embarrassed. “My family has a long history with the military. I suppose High Command wanted to avoid any unpleasant consequences that may have come from killing me.”

Ed just stares at him for a long minute. “That's pretty lucky,” he finally mutters.

“I'm not saying it's fair. I know it isn’t.”

“But hold on,” Ed says, leaning forward on his elbows. “If you were dishonorably discharged, how are you still wearing a uniform and following me around even though I never asked you to?”

“The Fuhrer doesn't like to lose Alchemists. After the war ended, he reinstated my commission.”

“So _nothing_ happened to you. Mustang tortures himself because of all the shit he did with a gun to his fucking head, and _nothing_ happened to you. Just because of your fucking family? That's…” Ed shakes his head. He can't even come up with a word for what that is.

Armstrong burrows his head in his hands for a moment, then looks up. “You're not wrong. I hold that knowledge with me every minute of every day.” He lets out a soft sigh. “Would it help you to know that I consider Mustang a friend?”

“No,” Ed mutters.

“He's the one who sent me here.”

“I fucking figured. Who else would think I need a babysitter?”

Ed turns away from Armstrong, pulling a book out of his bag and pretending to read. Why does he give a fuck about Mustang’s nightmares, anyway? Why does Armstrong’s free pass make him so angry?

Pay attention. He’s here for a _reason._ (He remembers the bones in the desert of Ishval). _Pay attention._

He holds the book tight in his hands, feeling its heavy weight, the sharp creases of its paper pages. There’s surprisingly little information available on Philosopher’s Stones, but if he can figure out how they work…

Al sits down on the bed across from him. Al who doesn’t have a body. That’s Ed’s reason.

After an uncomfortable hour, the woman from before comes into the room with three dinner trays carefully balanced in her arms. Armstrong takes them from her and sets them down on the bed he’s claimed as his own.

“Hey, you’re really nice to us!” Al comments. “Thank you!”

The woman smiles shyly. “You’re welcome. To tell the truth, I’ve been rather lonely ever since my boyfriend, Cain, died. That is why I’m here. Father Cornello says that if I do good work for the glory of God, then it is possible for Cain to come back to life.”

“Nobody can come back to life!” Ed yells. Al sighs. Rose flinches.

Al makes a noise that sounds like clearing his throat. “What’s your name, anyway?” he says, calm even in the face of his brother’s anger. “I’m Al. Alphonse Elric. That’s my brother, Edward. And Major Armstrong.”  
  
“I know who you are. You’re State Alchemists. Father Cornello says you’ve come to punish this town, even though those of us here are only doing the work of God.”

Armstrong frowns. Ed clenches his fists and glares. Alphonse shakes his armored head and says, “That isn’t true at all. We aren’t here to punish anyone. We’re just searching for something that might be able to help us, you see?”

Rose frowns. “Even so. Father Cornello says all State Alchemists are the enemies of God.”

“If you believe that, why’re you letting us stay here?” Ed asks.

“God is pleased when we show mercy to our enemies.” Armstrong chuckles softly. Ed growls. The woman ignores both of them and turns to Al. “My name is Rose,” she tells him.

“Thank you again for the food,” Al says. “I’m sorry about my brother. Sometimes he is rude, but he isn’t a bad person. He is trying to help, in his way.”

She shrugs. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she says as she leaves.

“Rose!” Al calls after her. “Wait!” She turns back, hovering in the doorway of the small room. Al pauses again, while Rose crosses her arms over her chest and looks at him quizzically. “My brother is right,” he finally says. “No one can bring people back to life. Even those who try are punished for their sin.”

“Al…” Ed warns.

Al reaches up to remove his head, showing Rose his hollow body. She gasps, and trembles. “W-what…?”

“You could call this the punishment I got for setting foot on holy ground. My brother and I both committed the unforgivable taboo. And now, we are only trying to return our bodies to the way they used to be.”

“ _Al…_ ” Ed implores. He doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t want Al believing that his body is some kind of divine punishment. It was Ed’s mistake, _Ed’s fault_. Not God’s.

“So you see,” Ed says. “We’re right, aren’t we? There’s no way your boyfriend can come back to life.”

Rose begins to cry, tears streaming from her eyes and loud wails erupting from her throat. She runs down the hall, her footsteps echoing loudly.

Ed turns back to his book, like nothing had happened.

* * *

“Come on, Al,” Ed hisses, hours into the night. Armstrong has fallen asleep, sprawled out on his back with his arms hanging from the sides of the bed, mouth open as he snores. “I’m going to find the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Al stands up, his body clanking as he moves. They move through the halls, not bothering to hide themselves. “Where do you think we’ll find the Stone, brother?”

“Well, that priest must keep it, don’t you think? We’ll have to find him.” Cruel laughter interrupts before he can even finish the sentence.

Ed whirls around. There’s a bright light shining into the hall, an open doorway. Ed stomps his way into the room, where Father Cornello sits on a carved throne, smiling broadly. He’d obviously been _waiting_ for them. Bastard. He stands up and walks over to Ed as soon as he crosses into the room.   
  
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  
  
Cornello yanks on the chain of Ed’s pocketwatch, ripping it from him. “This is the sign of a State Alchemist, yes? I’ve never seen one.”

“Give it back!”

Cornello laughs again, spinning the watch around his finger in lazy circles. “I’m surprised they’d give such a thing to a child.” Ed can see the glint of red light on the man’s finger as he stuffs the watch into his own pocket. “This is an alchemical amplifier, right? So without it, you must not be able to do very much.”  
  
“Try me, bastard.”

“Tsk, tsk. You would talk to your elder in such a way? I ought to teach you some manners, boy.”

There is a crackle of red light playing over the stone on Cornello’s finger, and the room suddenly fills with waves of sand, quickly burying Al, who cries out and then disappears under the onslaught.

Ed growls and quickly transmutes his automail arm into a blade. He’s up in the priest’s face, aiming to cut the man’s throat… and then he’s on his ass. He tilts his head back, staring up at Father Cornello.

The priest grins, cruel and cocky. “Run along home, little boy. An unbeliever like you isn’t wanted here.”

Ed spits into the sand and narrows his eyes. He takes deep breaths and shivers with rage. “You’re nothing but a fraud, old man.”

“That may be so, but do you truly think these people care if there’s any difference between alchemy and the works of God? It doesn’t matter to them as long as I can give them what they want.”

“But you _can’t_. You’re just a liar! A liar and a bully and-” Cornello backhands him across the face, the ring cutting into Ed’s cheek, drawing blood. “Is that all you got? Cuz my real teacher hit me harder when she was _happy_.”

The priest sighs. He sounds almost disappointed. There’s a flash of red light and cage bars form themselves out of the sand, efficiently surrounding Ed.

Ed rolls his eyes. And claps. And slams his palms down on the ground. The cage dissolves, and a giant fist of stone drives into Cornello’s rounded stomach, sending him flying. He slams into the far wall and slides down into the sand.

Ed stares at him for a few seconds. There’s a flash of red light, but Cornello doesn’t move, and no attack - alchemic or otherwise - touches Ed. “Come on, Al, let’s go.” He helps dig Al out of the sand, and then the two brothers cautiously approach Cornello.

The man is still alive, he’s breathing, but he’s whimpering and whistling in pain, clutching a twisted and warped right arm against his chest. Jagged shards of metal pierce the limb, and blood drips from it, and the muscles underneath the torn flesh bulge and some even snap and pop. It looks vicious, worse then just losing the arm straight-up. Cornello looks up at Ed with terrified eyes.

“Bitch of a rebound,” Ed observes coldly.

The stone he’d needed is gone, an empty socket in a broken ring the only remainder of its presence. A _fake_. Just like the priest who wore it.

Ed turns his back on the old man and stalks out of the room. Al seems reluctant to leave, but he does follow.

“Brother?” he says softly, and Ed realizes he can hear somebody crying.

There’s someone standing silhouetted in the window at the end of the hall. When she turns around, he can see that it’s Rose. Al is already clanking his way down to her before Ed can point out that he doesn’t _care_ why she’s crying.

“Rose?” Al asks.

She looks up, and she is shaking, and pale, and Ed frowns because there’s a sense of something-very-wrong even if he _doesn’t_ care.

“He was… he….” she breaks down again, into gasps of anguish and uncontrollable tears.

So Cornello kept his promise after all, and brought her boyfriend back, apparently.

“It wasn’t really your boyfriend, was it?” Ed asks pointedly.

He can _feel_ the heat of Al’s glare, but he did _try_ to tell this girl not to expect some great miracle. And it’s not like anything _happened_ to her, she tried to get something without giving anything, and Ed knows damn well that that never works even if it _doesn’t_ involve human transmutation.

(He can hear screaming, and it sounds like Al screaming, and he can feel the grasping claws of the Gate, and white flashes behind his eyelids, and there is blood under his hand and everything hurts and “ _I’ll do anything, just give him back, you bastard, just give him back, just give him back, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!”_ And the thing behind the doorway just smiled at him. Fucking _smiled_.)

(And Ed realizes he’s crying.)

And when he opens his eyes again, he’s on the fucking floor.

“Brother!” Al cries. (He cries, but he’s not _crying_.) (Armor can’t cry.) (Armor can’t cry, but Ed would know if Al was crying.)

He sits up, coughs. Rose is staring at him, eyes wide and terrified. He wipes his face with the back of his hand. “‘m _fine_ ,” he growls.

(Except people don’t black out when they’re fine.)

(But he’s fine.)

He struggles to his feet, and pointedly doesn’t look at either Al or Rose. “Let’s go, Al,” he says.

He can hear his brother apologizing to Rose, and then his clanking footsteps follow after him.

“The fuck are you doing here?” Ed asks, as Armstrong comes up beside him at the ticket window of the train station.

“I’m supposed to be guarding you, Fullmetal Alchemist.”

Ed rolls his eyes. “Whatever. We’re leaving, anyway.”

Armstrong puts a surprisingly gentle hand on Ed’s shoulder and tells the ticket attendant to switch the Elric brothers’ tickets from Central to East City.

“Why?”

“Because Mustang sent orders this morning while you were planning to leave without informing me.”

“And…?”

“And it isn’t safe for you to be in Central right now. There’s-”

Their conversation is interrupted by chaotic shouts as people push their way toward them. “There they are!” one man shouts. “There’s the unbelievers who attacked Father Cornello!”

“Uh oh,” Al says.

Armstrong punches the ground, and a wall of solid rock rises up between the three alchemists and the attacking villagers. Ed raises an eyebrow. “Thanks? I guess?” Armstrong puts a hand on his shoulder and steers him toward the train tracks. “Look, it’s not that I’m not glad for the assist, but the train isn’t coming for another hour and those people’re gonna find a way around that barrier way before that.”

Al clanks along behind Ed and Armstrong. “Maybe we could just tell them-”

“What, that we didn’t attack their stupid fucking priest? Because we did.”

“He attacked us first,” Al mutters.

“Well, yeah, but somehow I don’t think-”

There is the squealing of radio feedback, impossibly loud. And then Rose’s familiar voice interrupts the shouting. “Please allow the State Alchemists to leave peacefully,” she implores. “Remember: God is pleased with those who show mercy to their enemies.”

“What the fuck?” Ed mutters, but they get on the train unharmed, with Armstrong taking his bodyguard duties very seriously until it’s obvious that no one plans to attack them, because they’re halfway to East City and the only person who’s passed by is the lady pushing the food cart.

Once they make it East City, Armstrong insists that the Elrics stay close to him. “The Fuhrer is himself is here. So all of us ‘who won’t ever make anything of ourselves’ are going to be on our best behavior.”

“Awesome,” Ed mutters sarcastically. “So what the fuck’s going on? How come the _Fuhrer’s_ hiding out in East?”

“It’s called strategic retreat, Fullmetal.”

“Fuhrer!” Armstrong snaps to attention, with a perfectly crisp salute. He doesn’t even looking like he’s fucking _breathing_.

Ed snorts.

The Fuhrer actually _smiles_. It’s unsettling as all hell. Ed grinds his teeth. “So what are you ‘strategically retreating’ from, then? Sir.” (See, he _can_ do military.)

“There is an assassin targeting military officers.”

“Targeting Alchemists,” Armstrong points out softly. He’s dropped his salute but he’s still standing at rigid attention, and he seems to be biting his tongue as if to punish himself for speaking out of turn.

But the Fuhrer just nods. “Yes. Targeting Alchemists.”

The Fuhrer’s not an alchemist, but Ed can understand why the leader of the nation wouldn’t be allowed to keep himself in any potential line of fire. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks up at the Fuhrer. He’s aware of Al just behind him, watching the entire exchange. “So are all the Alchemists here in East, then?”

(Why is he worried about fucking _Mustang_? Why would it matter to him if his C.O. gets killed? It’s not like they’re friends.)

Armstrong shakes his head slightly, and the Fuhrer confirms it. “Lieutenant Colonel Mustang remained in Central City to assist with the investigation.” He _specifically_ mentions Mustang. Fucking hell.

(They’re _not_ friends.)

(If he survived Ishval, he sure as fuck can survive _Central_.)

(And Ed definitely _does not care_. At _all_.)

And why is the Fuhrer _staring_ at him? It’s rapidly approaching the line of creepy. “Right,” Ed says. “I’ll just… go.”

He turns, about to walk away, glancing up at Al and wondering if his brother is as unsettled as he is.

“Fullmetal.”

Ed stops. “Yeah?”

“Look into the research of Timothy Marcoh. You’ll find it interesting.”

Ed waits a moment before nodding. “I’ll do that, sir.”  
  
Armstrong follows Ed and Al as they walk out into the courtyard, because of course he does. “How long do you figure we’ll be stuck here?” Ed asks.

“You don’t have to think of it as being stuck,” Armstrong points out.  
  
“Don’t _you_ think of it as being stuck?”

“No,” Armstrong says simply. He knows what the boy is getting at, that his dead-end career should somehow grate on him, but he understands what it is to be trapped and in his dreams sometimes he still sees walls rising up out of nothing and gunfire ripping open screaming mothers and crying children, and sometimes he wakes up and wonders why he isn’t bleeding. Because in his dreams, he’s always on the wrong side of the wall.

He isn’t like Mustang, he’s never wanted to die. But then… he got to go home when the war got too heavy. No, he’ll never think of East as a punishment. He can work to redeem himself just as well here as anywhere else.

“D’you know about this Marcoh guy?” Ed asks.

“Doctor Marcoh created the Philosopher’s Stones we used in Ishval.”

Ed’s jaw drops. “He _what_? So all we have to do is talk to him, then. We can get the thing we need.”

“Marcoh fled from the battlefield during the war, and has been in hiding ever since. He may not even be in Amestris, you know. It’s possible he’s not even alive.”

“But the Fuhrer told us to look at his research,” Al points out. “So that must still exist.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be locked up in Central.” Ed kicks at a nearby rock. It skitters away down the cobblestones. “I’m going to Central. I don’t care if there’s a killer there. We have to find the Stone, Al.”

“I cannot let you do that,” Armstrong interjects. “It’s not _safe_ in Central.”

“Are you gonna stop me?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Brother…”

“ _Fine_!” Ed yells. He’s so frustrated he’s actually shaking.

Armstrong puts a calming hand on his shoulder, which Ed immediately shrugs off. “I will help you search for Marcoh, if you wish.”

Ed tilts his head back to look up at the man towering over him. “You… you will?”

“Of course. It’s the least I can do. We’re partners, remember?”

Ed sighs dramatically. He doesn’t want to think of Armstrong as a partner, he doesn’t _need_ a partner, but he needs a bodyguard even less and it seems obvious that the man isn’t going anywhere because his stupid fucking sense of honor is now tied up in the idea that he has to keep the Elrics safe.

“Fine,” Ed says, and this time he tries to really mean it.


	11. Chapter 11

East’s library sucks compared to Central’s but it’s closer to Ishval and holds more of the military’s records. If all the Alchemists really did carry a Philosopher’s Stone during the war, there very well may be something here that tells where they got them or how they were made.

“What happened to the stones after the war?” Ed asks.

Armstrong looks up from the box of paperwork he’s scanning. “I’d heard they were destroyed.”

“You believe that?”

Armstrong thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. “They would be held in reserve, I think. For the next war.”

“So you think they’re locked up in a vault somewhere.”

“It seems likely.”

“So maybe all we have to do is figure out where the vault is.”

Armstrong looks thoughtful. “I think,” he finally says. “That Marcoh is much more likely to be willing to help you with this quest to get your bodies restored than the Amestrian Military. They hold their secrets close, Edward.”

“But the Fuhrer told us about Marcoh,” Al points out.   
  
Armstrong shrugs. “The Fuhrer helps no one unless by doing so he also helps himself,” he says carefully.

Ed raises an eyebrow. “Well, that’s ominous.”

“He ordered the extermination of an entire people. Never forget that.”

“Right,” Ed sighs. “Come on, Al. Help me sort through these reports.”

* * *

“Brother?” Al asks. His concern his obvious. He rests his armored hand on Ed’s shoulder. Ed picks up his head, groggy and confused.

“Al?”

“You fell asleep. You’ve spent the whole night in the library, brother.”

“You didn’t… you stayed here with me?”

“Yeah. ‘Course I did. Major Armstrong did, too.”

Ed’s eyes find the muscular Alchemist sitting with his shirt unbuttoned and his feet up on the table as he leans back in a chair. He smiles at Ed. “Why?”

Armstrong shrugs. “There’s nothing unusual about an alchemist or two falling asleep in a library. There wasn’t really any reason to move you.”

Ed shrugs, and turns back to the files in front of him. He tries to stretch stiff muscles while he reads. He’s vaguely aware that he should probably eat something, but it seems like too much of a bother. Armstrong quietly flips through esoteric alchemy texts and Ed isn’t sure if he’s helping with the Philosopher’s Stone research or looking for something for himself, and he figures it’s not really his business. He doesn’t ask. Al looks for information on medical alchemy but there’s almost nothing to be found. All of that’s probably in Central.

Mostly what Ed’s finding are things he’d never want to know - details about exactly how alchemy was used to reduce an entire nation-state to ash and rubble. Explosions. Infernos. Walls to box the Ishvalans into a trap, where the Amestrian soldiers with their guns and grenades were lying in wait. Earthquakes that toppled buildings with dozens of people still inside. Over and over again, an entire town or village eradicated in a single day. Too many of those reports are written in Mustang’s familiar handwriting. Fuck. No wonder he thinks he deserves to be punished.

“I need a break,” he announces, and Al gets up to follow him, worried because he knows his brother too well.

They end up sitting on the steps of East Command for the second time in less than a week, Ed scowling at the sun and drumming at the stone beneath him with his automail hand. If he was at least finding some kind of useful information, that would be worth it. But all he can tell is that the Philosopher’s Stones the Alchemists carried let them make bigger explosions, bigger fires, bigger walls. What if even when they find one, it can’t do what they need it to do?

“Brother, have you ever heard of the Fifth Laboratory?” Al asks.

Ed picks his head up. “What?”

“Well, I only saw a passing reference to it, but it looked as if that’s where Doctor Marcoh created the Philosopher’s Stones that the Alchemists used. If we can go there, maybe we’ll find some. Or be able to make one.”

“I’ve never heard of a Fifth Laboratory,” Armstrong says. He’s coming down the stairs, with two bowls in his hand. He hands one to Ed, and Ed holds it while raising an eyebrow, saying neither ‘thank you’ nor ‘what are you doing here?’ He’s already mostly resigned himself to Armstrong’s annoying presence. “There are four alchemical research labs in Central, one each in North, South, West, and East. They’re supposed to freely share information. We could ask at the East Lab, if you’d like.”

Ed shovels ramen into his mouth and looks thoughtful. Then he nods. “Sure. That sounds like a good idea.”

* * *

“Al, look,” Ed says. There’s a scrawled signature at the bottom of one of the logbooks where people record checking out research materials. _Timothy Marcoh. 12 September 1908._

Armstrong snorts and shakes his head when he sees it. “Signing his real name in a government facility, the idiot. He’s lucky he wasn’t arrested on the spot.”

“Maybe someone pretended not to see him,” Ed says quietly.

“Huh. You might be right about that. I wonder if any of the employees here might remember him.”

Ed frowns, reading over the list of what Marcoh had taken… “Armstrong? What’s in Xenotime?”

* * *

A group of young boys run down the street. One of them falls onto the hard dirt, crying as blood runs down his leg. Ed watches as an older man limps over to the child and crouches down next to him. There’s a flash of red light, and then the kid gets up, laughing and running after his friends. “Thanks, Doctor!” he calls over his shoulder.

“Doctor Marcoh?” Ed asks.

The old man looks up with eyes that are red-rimmed with obvious exhaustion. “Can I help you?”

“I saw what you did. With that boy. You used a Philosopher’s Stone to heal him, didn’t you?”

Marcoh stares at Ed, his jaw dropping slightly. He glances at Armstrong, who hovers protectively behind the Fullmetal Alchemist. “Why don’t you come inside?” the doctor sighs.

Ed, Al, and Armstrong follow Doctor Marcoh into his small house. Marcoh puts a kettle on, because it makes him feel useful and because he’s desperate to prove he can be a good host after so many years of living alone. “Sit down,” he invites them. Ed and Armstrong sit at the small kitchen table. Al hovers in a corner while trying to seem casual about it.

Marcoh waits for the water to boil. He pours tea. He is hyper-aware of Alex Armstrong and Edward Elric both watching him, the boy with an impatience he doesn’t try to conceal and Armstrong with the sense of caution that can only come from shared history.

“You’re an Alchemist,” Marcoh says to Edward. It isn’t quite a question and it isn’t quite a disbelieving statement, but it’s somewhere in between.

“Yeah.”

“You’re so young.” Ed rolls his eyes, pulls the watch out of his pocket and sets it on the table, gives Marcoh a pointed look. Marcoh wraps his hand around his mug of tea, and doesn’t drink it. “I wasn’t questioning your competence,” he says slowly, softly. He looks helplessly at Armstrong. “I was questioning the government that would put a child in a military uniform.”

“I know what happened in Ishval,” Ed says. “I know what the State Alchemists did.”

“There’s a difference between knowing and doing,” Marcoh says. “And if there is another war, well…” he says, nodding toward the watch, and the silver chain coiled around it. “That chain’s no different from a leash, and it will choke you.”

“If you give me the Philosopher’s Stone, I won’t have to be a State Alchemist anymore. Would that make you happy?”

Marcoh looks Edward in the eye. The boy is obviously uncomfortable with the prolonged eye contact, but this question is important, and Marcoh won’t answer it if he can’t even manage to hold his gaze. Ed seems to realize that, too. He stares at Marcoh, almost glaring, tense and impatient, and oh, he will be dangerous. He probably already is, if they gave him a pocketwatch at the age of twelve. “You understand the concept of Equivalent Exchange, I take it.”

“Duh.” But the quip is half-hearted, even a little haunted. Because Edward Elric may be twelve, but he knows just as well as Marcoh does that there’s a difference between being able to recite and understanding, and he does in fact _understand_ the concept of Equivalent Exchange.

“You seek the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone. Some magical object that can break the rule of Equivalent Exchange. There’s no such thing.”

“But-”

Marcoh pulls the red stone out of his pocket. It glows slightly, light that looks like blood reflected in its surface. It looks so small. He holds it between thumb and forefinger, and stares at it as he talks to Edward. “They’re also called alchemical amplifiers, you know. They don’t make something from nothing, they just give an alchemist a different source of power to draw from. But in order to provide the illusion of creating something from nothing, they must destroy something of very great value. And that cost is higher than you would be willing to pay, I think.” _I hope_ , he doesn’t say, but yes: he _hopes_.

“I have to get my brother’s body back. I _have to_.”

“These stones cost us all of Ishval.”

“I _know_. I know you used them to destroy-”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, without that destruction, the Philosopher’s Stones could not have been created.”

“You mean?”

“These reservoirs of power hold the energy of human lives. Are you willing to pay that cost?”

Ed looks at him with disgust, with _horror_ , and Marcoh smiles his tired, broken smile. Because at least he was right about that. The boy’s still salvageable.

* * *

  
“So…” Maes starts.

Roy looks up. “I know I…”  
  
“Let a serial killer escape?”

“Maes.”

“I know, Roy. I was there too, remember?” Roy nods. There in the alley, or there in Ishval?

Hughes sits down on the couch next to Roy and sighs heavily. “Well, we’re truly fucked, aren’t we?”

Roy doesn’t quite nod, but he tries to. This could be a court-martial. And he doesn’t even know what he’d say to defend himself. What he did was indefensible. “Do you think he deserves his revenge?” he asks quietly.

“Do you?”

Roy closes his eyes. “I dunno. I just… when I saw him, really _saw him_ , I... froze up.”

Maes blows out a breath. “I can take you off the investigation.”

Roy’s extended silence proves that he probably _should_. But when he shakes his head and says “Don’t do that,” Maes knows he’ll give in.   
He closes his eyes. “Might not be a choice…” he points out. “But I’ll fudge the report as much as I can.”

“Thank you, Maes.”

Hughes reaches over to squeeze Roy’s shoulder. Roy pulls away. Hughes lets him. He gets up and brings a pillow and blanket over to the couch, and there’s no question that Roy will accept them. Mustang tucks the pillow underneath his head and keeps his eyes closed until he hears his best friend’s footsteps fading as he disappears into his own bedroom. Then, Roy opens his eyes and flips onto his back, staring at the ceiling of Hughes’ living room.

The night passes fitfully, with Roy unable to stop dreaming of red eyes accusing him from behind smoke-choked wreckage, staring out at him from hollow skulls charred black. He curls up on the sofa and throws his arm over his head as if blocking the light coming in from the streetlights outside the window will somehow also stop the voices in his head. He rides the pain of imaginary fire and whistles out wheezing breaths.

When he opens his eyes again, there is a little girl staring down at him.

“Hi, Mister Mustang!” Frizia greets him cheerfully.

Maes smiles sheepishly. “Sorry, Roy. I don’t think she can quite handle ‘Lieutenant Colonel’ yet.”

Roy shrugs. “Nobody’s wearing a uniform here,” he points out, although he is, actually. But just the pants. “It’s not like she calls you Major Hughes.”

“No, she calls me Dad.” He’s grinning, genuinely happy, and Roy forces a smile.

“Can I get you a coffee, Lieutenant Colonel?” Gracia asks from the kitchen.

Roy rolls his eyes. Maes stifles a laugh. “I’m sure Roy would love a coffee,” he calls to his wife. “Come on, Mustang. Get up.” He holds out his hand to help Roy to his feet.

They end up sitting around the kitchen table while Gracia sets food in front of them and glares at Roy until he eats. Frizia watches Mustang the whole time, barely blinking. Roy figures he still remembers him from the day her mother died, which is hardly a comforting thought. But she’d been happy enough when he woke up on the couch. He looks to Maes for help. He has no idea what to do with children.

“Frizia, honey, why don’t you get ready for school?” Gracia suggests. The baby starts crying from the other room, and she steps smoothly away from the table. Maes catches her hand as she passes by, and she leans in for a kiss.

“Be home for dinner tonight,” she tells him. It’s half a question and half a command. Maes nods. He’ll try, anyway. 

He and Roy walk to Headquarters under a steel grey sky that spritzes water at unpredictable intervals. Mustang seems deep in thought, frowning and serious no matter how hard Maes tries to boost his spirits. He runs a hand through slightly-damp hair as Maes heads for the Investigations office, then trudges toward the sweeping staircase toward his smaller office on the second floor.  
Riza is waiting for him. He winces. “I’m sorry,” he blurts out instinctively. She raises an eyebrow. “I… we were out late. Hughes and me, at the crime scene. I just… slept at his place. It seemed easier.”

“I know, sir.”

“You… do?”

“Well, it wasn’t hard to guess. The men who came back last night say there was a suspect.”

 _I should’ve called_ , Roy was about to say, but that comment dies before it’s born, replaced instead with _I shouldn’t have let the Ishvalan serial killer run_.

“He escaped custody,” Roy says quietly.

Riza squints a question at him, but she finally nods. “That’s unfortunate, sir.”

Roy bites his lip. He knows she knows, knows she won’t say anything, and his stomach is twisting into knots because if he gets himself up on charges for this, what will that mean for her? She promised to follow him. He has to protect her in return. And Maes, Maes who will fudge reports to cover for him, and what if he gets caught, he could lose his job and his pension, and he has a wife and two kids to support.

What the hell was he thinking? That it was safe to conspire with the enemy, just because they aren’t in Ishval anymore?

He _wasn’t_ thinking. And now, everything he’d been working toward might be about to collapse, all for a half-second’s decision that he didn’t even actively decide. But no. He _did_ decide. And now he has to live with the consequences of his decision.

Roy scrubs his face with his hands and tells Riza he’s headed for the Investigations office. He doesn’t make it halfway there before he runs into Major General Hakuro, the man who had taken over for Basque Grand, standing at the bottom of the stairs in the main entrance hall, looking for all the world like he’d been waiting for Mustang’s arrival. Roy takes a breath, and after a second’s hesitation, salutes. “General Hakuro, sir.”

“Interview Room. Now.”

Roy nods. He follows the larger man into one of the little rooms, not much bigger than a jail cell, and waits just inside the door. He has to back up against the metal table to give Hakuro the space to walk in. “Sit down, Mustang.”

Roy sits. He keeps his back straight and his eyes on the Major General and he keeps his face blank while he thinks about the chemical composition of various fires. Oxygen. Hydrogen. Methane. Propane. The whole world is ready to burn. That thought should be terrifying, really, but he sparks all the flames, so he finds it oddly comforting instead. It gives him a sense of power he shouldn’t feel while he’s being dressed down by a superior officer. He almost smirks. (Ed Elric would smirk). Roy waits, with a dangerous sense of calm.

“Do you want to explain to me, Lieutenant Colonel, how one man managed to escape an entire task force as well as the famous, heroic Flame Alchemist?” Roy says nothing. “I know your work, Mustang. You don’t _miss_. Not unless you’re trying to.”

Roy thinks, ‘You don’t know anything. You weren’t there. You think you can bring up Ishval like it’s a game?’

What he says is: “It was dark, sir.”

“You make _fire_.” Roy says nothing. “You’re off the investigation. And you’re to see Doctor Anderson this afternoon for an FFD.”

Roy lets his eyes slip closed, and he exhales. Well, it’s not like he wasn’t expecting this. And a Fitness For Duty evaluation is not a court martial. So that’s something.

“Yes, sir,” he says, voice steady as he opens his eyes again. Hakuro is still looking at him with obvious disgust.

“The suspect is Ishvalan.”  
  
It’s not a question. “Yes,” Roy replies. “Sir.”

Hakuro suspects something but can’t prove it. But Roy Mustang is the fucking Hero of Ishval, so it’s not like anyone will be likely to believe Hakuro if he tries to make something of this. An FFD is not a court martial. Hakuro snarls down at him and slams his hand down on the metal table but Roy doesn’t jump or even flinch. He lets the man’s anger burn out. He gives Hakuro no ammunition.

“Your appointment with Doctor Anderson is at 1300. I want you in your office until then, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get out of my sight.”

Mustang leaves, aware of Hakuro’s eyes on him the entire time. Hakuro’s not the only man who’s jealous of Roy’s status as High Command’s pet Hero, it lets him get away with a lot, and they both know it. Hakuro’s jealous of the talents of State Alchemists generally, the way they operate a little outside the chain of command, cocky because of their abilities. It takes something drastic for an Alchemist to face military sanction. Major Kimblee is the only one of them who’s had to confront any real long-lasting consequences in decades.

He slips into his office, where Havoc is trying to regale Hawkeye with tales of his exploits about town the previous night, while the rest of the men place bets on how soon she’ll pull out her gun. Hawkeye meets Roy’s eyes as soon as he steps through the door. When she sees the look on his face, she stands up and walks toward him. “Major Armstrong’s sent a report on the situation in Liore. You’ll need to look at it.”

Roy nods, and follows her into his private office. Riza shuts the door behind them and crosses her arms over her chest. “Sir?”

“Hakuro ordered an FFD.” Riza holds her breath, and then nods. Roy frowns as he watches her. “You don’t think he’s _right_ , do you? That I’m unfit for duty?”

“Do you feel like you’re getting better?” she asks quietly.

“I couldn’t…” He blows out a long breath. That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? He saw an Ishvalan, on the ground, bleeding. He read ‘helpless,’ he saw ‘innocent.’ He didn’t snap his fingers. The only thing that saves him here is the fact that there was no direct order to do so. But the implied order still stands, sharp like a sword at the back of his neck. Or a gun to his head. “Riza, we said _never again_.”

“So, stand by it.” Roy frowns. “You didn’t disobey an order, sir. You did nothing wrong. You would have been in your rights to kill the man in self-defense, but you chose not to, and that’s within your rights as well. Major Hughes and the rest of his team will find him and bring him to justice.”

“But if he kills another Alchemist before then…”

Riza breathes carefully. Her eyes hold Roy’s. He wants to gather her in his arms, but they’re at work, in the middle of the day, and he knows that she’d resist. So he just watches her. “I think you have enough blood on your own hands without taking on that which belongs to others. Sir.”

Roy finally nods. “Thank you, Riza.”


	12. Chapter 12

Doctor Anderson’s office is in a smaller office building near HQ. Roy hasn’t been inside it since coming back from Ishval, when apparently he’d been a good enough liar to convince the man he was fine (but then, back then, he _was_ fine. The war caught up later, it’s still catching up: in dreams, in shadows out of the corner of his eye, in bad decisions. It’s getting worse, not better. He needs help.)

Anderson has deep brown eyes and a kind smile that somehow still manages to convey a sense of seriousness. He nods toward a chair tucked into the corner of his office, which is painted a blue color that is supposed to be calming, and decorated mostly with diplomas and here and there with photographs of his family. Roy turns away from the happily smiling little girl in the gold picture frame and focuses on the doctor. He sits at his desk and asks if Roy wants something to drink. Roy frowns.

“This isn’t… I’m not here for a friendly chat, Doctor.”

“General Hakuro is concerned about your ability to follow orders.”  
  
“I can follow orders.”

“You were the ranking officer in the field last night, were you not?”  
  
“Major Hughes was leading the Investigations team. I was just… he thought I could be helpful.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Mustang lets his eyes sweep over Doctor Anderson’s desk. “You know what happened. Don’t you? You’ve read the report.”

“The report says you froze up, preventing the Investigations team from apprehending the suspect and making no move to neutralize him yourself.” Roy blows out a breath. He nods slightly. “Is that what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever frozen up like this before?”

Roy shakes his head. “I have always done everything the Amestrian Military asked of me.”

Anderson settles back in his chair. “And how do you feel about that, Lieutenant Colonel Mustang?”   
  
“Who cares how I fucking _feel_? Just tell Major General Hakuro I’ll follow orders. I _always_ follow orders.” He can barely contain his anger. It flares up like fire in his chest.

“Your records say you requested sleeping pills in Ishval.” Roy shrugs. “Are you still taking sleeping pills?” Roy shakes his head. “Do you have nightmares?”  
  
“Everyone has nightmares.”

“What do you dream about?”

(Screaming, crying, grasping hands, charred bodies, burning meat, licking flames, echoing gunshots and pools of blood, and the feeling of the barrel of a pistol pressed against his own chin)

He doesn’t answer.

“How often would you say you have these nightmares?”

Roy shrugs. “I dunno. It depends.”

“Once a month? Once a week? Every night?”

“Not _every_ night,” Roy hedges.

Doctor Anderson sighs. “I’ll be honest, Mustang, if I rule the Hero of Ishval unfit for duty, the Fuhrer himself is likely to have my head.”

“I’m not unfit for duty.”

“Are you drinking?”  
  
“Everyone drinks.”

“Do you drink on duty?”

“No.”

“Do you come to work hungover or come to work late because of a hangover?”  
  
“No. Not for a long time. I know I’m not perfect, Doctor, but I can still do my job, ask anybody.”

“No fieldwork. You stop drinking. And you’re back here once a week to check in.”

Mustang grinds his teeth. “For how _long_?”

“Until I can convincingly report to Major General Hakuro that you’re not going to get yourself or someone else killed out there.”

Roy knows it isn’t optional. This _is_ an order, one he can’t disobey. He nods agreement.

* * *

Hughes plays with one of his knives, balancing it in his hand before tucking it away. “Come on,” he says, to the Investigations squad. “Let’s get going.”

The Ishvalan ghetto on the outskirts of Central City is not supposed to exist. It exists anyway, so Central’s military patrols it regularly, keeping a careful watch on the population to make sure it offers no threat to the Amestrian citizens living in the city. It’s a border camp in all but name, subject to similar rules. The Ishvalans trying to make a living in the slum are all either very old or very young.

Hughes rides on the back of a truck and wishes this didn’t feel so familiar. He holds his breath, tense and wary, waiting for someone to shoot at him, waiting for an explosion. He can feel the knives resting against his skin. He reminds himself that the truck is bouncing over cobblestones, not forcing its way through sand, and that he can taste the humidity in the air. This isn’t Ishval.

The people disappear into their tents and makeshift dwellings, quiet as ghosts. Hughes can’t blame them. He and his people are in civilian dress, knowing that no sane Ishvalan would trust anyone wearing the uniform of the Amestrian Military, but he doubts anyone is fooled. “I just want to ask a few questions,” he calls out to the empty street as he jumps down from the truck. “We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

Predictably, no one responds. Sergeant Rainville, who was in Ishval, another too-young recruit thrown into the fire before they should’ve been, like Riza Hawkeye, rips open the flap of the nearest tent, gun in hand.

“Stand _down_ ,” Hughes snaps, just as a gravelly voice washes over the street:

“What are you looking for?” The words are accented and uncertain, making it obvious that the man speaking them isn’t used to speaking Amestrian, but Hughes puts on what he hopes is a comforting smile and holds out his hands in a gesture of peace.

“We’re looking for a fugitive,” he starts.

“Fugitive?” the man repeats.

“A criminal. A killer. He has tattoos all down his right arm.” Hughes sweeps his hand down his arm, trying to demonstrate. He doesn’t miss the way the man’s eyes widen. Bingo. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

“He’s injured.”

Obviously. If he’d had any other recourse, he’d have gone anywhere other than the first place the military would look.

But this man has killed five State Alchemists. Hughes is absolutely aware of the need for caution. “Where is he?” he asks the old man.

“Please don’t hurt,” is the reply.   
  
Hughes sighs. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” That part, at least, is true.

Hughes flashes his squad the hand sign for ‘cover’ and follows the old man toward a shack that seems to have been constructed mostly out of corrugated tin and cardboard. The man pushes the door open, revealing a dimly lit room where the fugitive lies in a bed, his forehead being mopped at with a rag by a young boy. A slightly older child watches from the corner of the room, though he jumps to his feet as soon as he sees Hughes.

“What’s he doing here?!” he cries, looking to the old man for some explanation.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” Hughes repeats.

The man on the bed coughs and struggles to sit up. “Are you here to kill me, Amestrian?”

“ _No_.”

The scarred man’s smile is eerie in the dim light. “What will happen to me if I go with you, then?”

“Well…” Hughes frowns. “You’ll face trial, I suppose, and-”

The man laughs. “Trial? You think someone like me would be heard in a trial? Your people have already decided my guilt.”

“You _are_ guilty. You’ve killed five State Alchemists already.”

“And how many thousands of Ishvalans did those Alchemists kill?”

“This isn’t the answer!”

“What is, then?”

“I can’t just let you go.”

The scarred man shrugs. He is silent for a long time. Then: “I will let you take me from this place if you _swear_ that there will be no retribution against these people.”

Hughes raises an eyebrow. Then, he nods.

“What are you doing?!” The little boy cries, as Hughes starts trying to lift the scarred man out of bed, pulling his left arm over his shoulders and supporting him with his whole body.

The scarred man says something to the boy in Ishvalan, but the older boy puts himself in front of the door of the little shack, trying to block Hughes’ way.

More Ishvalan, and the scarred man sounds angrier, to Hughes’ ears. The kid says something back. The conversation continues. Hughes shifts a bit; the scarred man is heavier than he is, and the weight is uncomfortable. The kid’s eyes flicker up to meet his. The fear in them is obvious.

“I won’t hurt him,” Maes promises.

The scarred man says something in Ishvalan, a gentler repeat of some of his previous words. The kid steps aside, glaring at Hughes but not preventing him from leaving.

“I’m coming out with the suspect,” Hughes calls out to his team. “Don’t shoot us!”

The scarred man, his arm still draped over Hughes’ shoulder, chuckles softly.

Hughes manages to wrangle the man onto the back of the truck. He’s still bleeding.

He winds up in the hospital instead of a prison, though his hands are shackled to the bed. He sleeps for a long time, while Hughes watches. Apparently, the Ishvalans he’d stayed with had removed the bullets from his flesh. All that’s left now is for him to heal. Hughes finds his eyes drawn toward the elaborate tattoo on the man’s right arm. Hughes is not an alchemist, but his best friend is, and he knows enough to recognize a transmutation circle when he sees one. The marks on this man’s arm don’t look like anything he’s ever seen.

Out of habit, Hughes pulls out a notepad from his bag - the kind he normally uses for taking witness statements or writing down notes at crime scenes - and he starts sketching the design trailing over the man’s skin.

“What… what are you doing?”

Hughes looks up. Enough time has passed that he’s gotten nearly the whole tattoo down on paper. “You’re awake.”

The man thrashes in the hospital bed, trying to free himself from his restraints. He growls and hisses and his red eyes flash with hatred. There’s a flare of red light, and the sound of a small explosion. Hughes already has a knife in his hand, he’s on his feet, the Ishvalan is watching him, surprisingly calm for having just melted away a handcuff while Hughes watched. His left wrist is still shackled to the bed.

“Kill me if you’re going to, Amestrian.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” Hughes says quietly.

The door to the hospital room bangs open, the guards provided by the military apparently having just realized that there’s been some kind of altercation. “Are you alright, sir?” one of them asks Hughes.

Maes runs his hand through his hair, still holding the knife. “Fine, I just… I’m fine.” Hand still wrapped around his knife. The Ishvalan man on the bed is still glaring at him, but he appears to have settled. “He’s not going to kill me,” Hughes tells the two men hovering in the doorway. “Are you?” he asks the scarred man.

The silence is near-total for several seconds, and then the man flicks his head to the side. “No.”

The guards stand in the doorway, until Hughes waves them away. He wants to talk to this man, and he can’t do that if they’re surrounded by soldiers. Maes is still wearing civvies. He knows he’s not fooling anyone. He sits down again, leans forward, elbows on his knees as he studies the man on the bed.   
  
“What’s an Ishvalan doing using alchemy? I thought your people forbid that.”

“I don’t have a people anymore.”

Hughes blows out a long breath. What is he supposed to say to that? He plays with his knife and bites his tongue as he tries to force back the memories of slicing children’s throats open while the blood ran down his fingers, drawing the blade over bare skin in shallow painful cuts as he questioned captured Ishvalans in the earlier days of the war, when they still believed his promises to spare their families if they gave him information. Even then, most of his interrogations failed, resulting in nothing more than brutal death.

“You can’t keep killing State Alchemists,” he insists, rather than admitting his complicity in the genocide.

“My cause is holy, Amestrian. I do the work of Ishvala.”

Maes raises an eyebrow. “Hughes,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s my name. Major Maes Hughes. You don’t have to keep calling me ‘Amestrian.’”

“You give your name away so easily?”

“What should I call you?”

“Whatever you wish. I lost my name when I lost my people.”

“Fine,” Hughes concedes.

“Will you prevent me from doing God’s work?”

“I can’t _let_ you-”

The scarred man snarls again, this time straining toward Hughes with his right arm. Hughes throws his knife, but it lands in the meat of the man’s upper arm, which is already flaring red. He yanks at the cuff on his left wrist with incredible strength, though it holds until he uses his other hand to deconstruct it, giving Hughes enough time to draw another knife. Scar’s up on his knees, leaning forward, and Hughes doesn’t think. He slips into the part of himself that survived Ishval at any cost because he had to come home to Gracia, and he’s punching his knife down toward the man’s chest, driving it toward the heart. But it doesn’t connect. Scar’s right arm sweeps the knife away, and then he’s leaning forward and wrapping his hand tight around Hughes’ throat. He squeezes until Hughes’ vision blackens at the edges. He falls, slams his head against the floor, can’t breathe.

He’s vaguely aware of screaming. And then, silence.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, Mustang’s there.

“Hell of a day, Hughes,” his friend says.

“I thought…” His throat burns. He starts to hack and cough.

“Don’t talk.” Hughes looks at Roy with pleading eyes. It’s a look Roy remembers seeing on wounded soldiers in Ishval, men and women who stared death in the eye. Roy swallows hard and puts on what he hopes is a reassuring smile. He puts his hand on top of Hughes’. “You’re not going to die.” Maes narrows his eyes. “Let me go get Gracia.”

“Roy…”  
  
“Don’t. _Talk_.”

Hughes glares, and then nods toward the chair, where the drawing he’d done of the scarred man’s tattoo still sits. The man hadn’t taken it with him, forgetting it in his haste to flee, or just not caring?

Roy picks up the drawing, eyes wide. He frowns as he studies it. “This doesn’t… what _is_ this?” He shakes his head and tucks it into his pocket. “I’ll get it out to the civilian police. This guy’s almost certainly gone to ground, but maybe we’ll get lucky. And I’ll… maybe if I can figure out how it _works_ , we can stop it.” He looks up again, meeting Hughes’ eyes. “I’ll get Gracia,” he repeats.


	13. Chapter 13

“Sir, you need to see this,” Riza says, softly but firmly, once he makes it back to his office.

“What is it, Riza?”

She hands him a report. Roy reads it over, feeling his chest tighten and his stomach drop out. “This wasn’t… 3066 is null and void. They had no right.”

“They were harboring a fugitive…”

“Those slums were full of old people and children! And they just…” His heartbeat is racing. He can’t breathe. They used flamethrowers, and he can feel the heat of that fire. They set up a cordon and gunned down the ones who ran. This isn’t Ishval. _This isn’t supposed to happen here._

A raw scream tears itself from his throat, and he picks up the nearest available object - the pocketwatch chained loosely to his belt - and throws it across the room. It hits the wall and slides to the floor. The catch opens, and if he were close enough, he’d be able to hear the clock inside ticking.

The door to his office slams open, and Lieutenant Havoc stands there, gun in hand, eyes searching for threat.

“We’re safe, Lieutenant,” Riza says softly. “If you could just… discretion would be appreciated.”

Havoc stares at her, a frown of obvious concern on his face. But then he nods. And closes the door behind him.

“Roy, look at me,” Riza says softly. She puts her hand atop his. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away. “This… should not have happened. But it isn’t your fault. Okay?”

Roy breathes out, long and slow. He nods, carefully. Riza can see the fury and hurt in his dark eyes, an expression she remembers all too well from the nights they shared out in Ishval. As soon as he’s calmed down, she removes her hand from his. Once he’s sat down at his desk and buried his head in his hands, fingers raking through his dark hair, she clears her throat. “There’s more,” she says softly.

“I don’t know if I can handle any more, Riza.”

“They're transferring you - us - to East.”

“ _Why_?”

When Riza answers, her voice is pitched low and calm, the way it has been the entire conversation, but Roy knows her well enough to read it as stressed. “They're worried about the border. Apparently Colonel Gloster wasn't as wrong as you thought.”

“There's been an attack?”

“A small one. Easily rebuffed. But they're recalling noncombatants, what few there are out there. And sending us East.”

“What about the refugees?”

“Sounds like Lieutenant Colonel Wright is using them as a shield. Counting on the idea that the terrorists won't hit their own people.”

“And our military just wiped out an entire neighborhood of Ishvalans. _We’re_ hitting their people, Riza, that’ll provoke a response.” He sighs, and squeezes his eyes shut, tries listening to his heartbeat and counting his breaths the way Dr. Anderson had tried teaching him in their hasty first meeting when he got back from the war. “I thought the war was over.”

“It’s highly unlikely the insurgents have a reliable link to Central. They won’t _know_.”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. _Fuck_.” Riza puts a hand on his shoulder, and he looks at her. “We said _never again_.”

“No one’s using alchemy…”  
  
“So a flamethrower’s better? Fire is fucking fire! Dead is dead.”

“It’s not a war yet. East City is hardly a front line.”

“I know,” Roy runs his hand through his hair. “But it won’t be lost on the Ishvalans that the majority of Amestrian High Command - and a not insignificant number of Alchemists - are massing at that not-front-line. The closest HQ to their border.”

“I think that’s the point.”

“Intimidation?”

“Well, that’s a better spin than letting them think High Command is running scared because of one Ishvalan.”

“Fuck,” Roy repeats, softly.

* * *

“I’m being transferred,” Roy says quietly.

Dr. Anderson nods. “I know. And General Grumman will have access to your medical records, so you’ll have to be careful. No back-sliding.”

“I can take care of myself, Doctor.”

Anderson just stares at him for a long time, then finally says. “I hope that’s true, Lieutenant Colonel. But just in case-”

“I know. No alcohol, regular check-ins with your Eastern counterpart, writing down my _feelings,_ ” he practically spits the last part.

“Is it helping?”

“I burn the paper when I’m done.”

“But is it helping?”

“Maybe,” Roy admits. The nightmares haven’t been so strong, for the last couple of weeks. Although tonight will probably be a difficult one. He sighs. He carefully doesn’t mention throwing things in his office earlier.

Dr. Anderson studies him, clearly aware that Roy isn’t sharing everything, but well used to working with soldiers. “Call me if you need me.”

“Sure.”

“You’re not the only one who struggles.”

“I know that, Doctor.”

“It doesn’t make you weak.”

“I _know_.”

Anderson nods. “Maybe a change of scenery will be good for you,” he says, because in the military they go where sent, and make the best of the orders they've sworn to follow.

“Yeah,” Mustang agrees dubiously. “Maybe.”

* * *

“Have you been in Xenotime all these years?” Armstrong asks. “Why here?”

“There was an alchemist here who was doing research into a way of producing Philosopher’s Stones without requiring the human contributors to die.” Marcoh says. “It didn’t work, as far as I know, and the military carted him off shortly before the war. Still, once I arrived and got to know these people… alchemy’s caused a lot of damage, Alex. Even in Amestris. Here in Xenotime, I could heal some of it.”

The two of them are sitting on the low brick wall that rings Marcoh’s garden, looking out at the setting sun.

“Of course, if we could find you here, others in the military may follow. So I imagine you’ll be moving on, won’t you?”

Marcoh shrugs. “Desertion’s still a crime. Even if the war is over.” He sighs. “I've stayed here too long, anyway. Maybe I’ll get out of Amestris. I'd love to learn more about the healing alchemy of Xing.”

“That won’t be an easy trip.”

Marcoh says nothing. Alex is content to leave him to his silence, but that silence is broken by Edward stomping out into the yard, badgering Al about some petty argument, loudly. He stops short as soon as he realizes that the two older Alchemists are looking at him. Al looks at his brother. Ed wraps his flesh-and-blood arm around his automail arm and looks up at Armstrong.

“So, we’re leaving, right?”

Armstrong frowns, casting his concerned glance from Ed to Marcoh and back. But he nods, and gets to his feet.

Ed remains uncharacteristically quiet for most of the train ride. He whispers to Al, every now and then, Major Armstrong doesn’t try to listen in on their conversation. He’s too busy wondering at what Marcoh has revealed. The Philosopher’s Stones are made from _killing people_. And the upper echelons of the military not only knew, but condoned it. Not only condoned it, but orchestrated the war in Ishval to maximize casualties so they could pay the required blood toll.

Armstrong has spent most of his life being called an overly emotional coward, a trait his father tried more than once to beat out of him, when he was younger. His family has been tied to the upper echelons of the Amestrian Military for generations. So he has more awareness than most that might makes right in Amestris. It sickens him, but he isn’t shocked that the Fuhrer would sacrifice millions to keep himself in power.

Still, trapping human lives to use as _fuel…_ he may be an alchemist, but he has no idea how to go about such a thing. It’s got to be dangerously close to human transmutation. Marcoh swore he was the only State Alchemist who knew how to do it, but Armstrong isn’t so sure. The military wouldn’t willingly sacrifice that power, would they? If a twelve-year-old could find Tim Marcoh, then all of the Fuhrer’s considerable forces certainly could, if they’d really needed to. So no, it’s likely that someone else connected to High Command knows the secret. That’s an investigation Armstrong is absolutely not eager to start. Alphonse mentioned something about a Fifth Laboratory.

Major Hughes is posted in the Investigations Division in Central. And Mustang trusts him. So that’s a potential ally. And if the Fuhrer and all of High Command are still stationed in East City, maybe they won’t notice someone poking around in all this. Armstrong needs some time in Central. He can manufacture some reason to go back home, surely.

“Major Armstong?” Al says. His voice is louder than it usually is. Armstrong looks up, suddenly pulled out of his disconcerting thoughts. “It’s time to get off the train, sir.”

“Oh,” Armstrong rumbles, as he picks up both his gear and the Elrics’. “Right.”

* * *

“You’re out of practice, Roy.”

He shrugs. He’s never especially _needed_ a gun, it just comes with the uniform, that’s all. And although he’s been carrying his again, it still doesn’t feel comfortable in his hand. He holds it in a steady two-handed grip, aims at the target, squeezes the trigger. He jumps at the sound, winces at the recoil. He feels unforgivably weak. He was better than this in his first week at the academy.

“Try it again,” Riza says, calm and steady. Roy nods.

He shoots until he is able to ignore the sound, pushing it down into some other part of him, where it isn’t connected to his current reality. He lets Riza adjust his grip, knowing she’s better at this than he is.

He hits the target, again and again, working off of muscle memory he hadn’t realized he’d possessed. But he and Maes used to make stupid bets all the time over who made more bullseye shots, when they were at the academy. Of course, Maes at some point figured out he was better with knives, and Roy had alchemy, so guns became an afterthought for both of them. Drill was drill, though. Aim, sight, pull. When he doesn’t let himself get frozen by his memories, he can do it. He does it until Riza is satisfied.

They go back to the small apartment Riza’s found that will let her keep a dog, a basement walk-in that’s dark and somewhat depressing, but Roy’s living on-base because it’s easier, and that might be _more_ depressing. Hayate barks and sniffs at Roy’s shoes until he reaches down to pet the dog. Riza grabs a leash and they go for a walk.

“How does it not bother you, pulling the trigger?” Roy asks quietly. “After everything…”

Riza stops walking. Hayate whines, so she lets out his leash a little, but she’s concentrating fully on Roy. “I never said it doesn’t,” she points out carefully.

“You never flinch, though.”

She shrugs. “I know what I’m doing. I know the choice I’m making, every time I take out my gun. It’s my decision. Always has been, even in Ishval. I can live with the consequences.”

“Riza…”

She talks about Ishval even less than he does. Somehow she’s always the one comforting _him_. He frowns. She sighs.

“I know you don’t like guns, Roy. I know you never have. But a gun is just a tool. One you know how to use, so you should use it.” He says nothing. Riza slowly begins walking again, as Hayate leads the way. “You went to the academy before I did. Before flame alchemy was anything but a thought experiment. Did you put on that uniform thinking you wouldn't be asked to kill?”

“You’re quoting Kimblee now?”

“He wasn’t always entirely wrong.”

“Just crazy.”

Riza shrugs. “You knew what you were doing when you decided to become a soldier. Yes, you’ve been asked to kill. We’ve all killed. But you said you wanted to use the uniform to protect the people. If you didn’t believe that was still possible, you’d have resigned your commision when the other State Alchemists did.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“You know I’m right.” She puts her hand on the back of his neck, pulling him down to kiss her. He’s surprised, she doesn’t usually initiate any kind of physical intimacy between them, unless they’re safely tucked away behind a locked door where no one will interrupt. He presses her lips to hers for a few long, slow seconds, and then Hayate barks and they break apart.

“Don’t falter now,” Riza says. “You have a goal. Don’t lose sight of it.”

“You won’t let me,” Roy points out.

“So aren’t you lucky to have me?”

He takes her hand and they walk back to her place, though he doesn’t stay. Helping a friend unpack is justifiable, but spending the night definitely isn’t, and they don’t quite know how to read their new superiors in East yet.

Riza says Lieutenant General Grumman has a reputation for playing somewhat loose with the regulations, and there are rumors that he may have even had an indiscretion or two himself, so that’s promising. But things are rocky enough already for Roy, while he’s being monitored for psychological issues, even _if_ the Fuhrer himself says he’s fine. Roy doesn’t quite feel fine, but he has to get to the goal. Blatantly breaking the fraternization regulations would be a stupid reason to lose everything. And Riza would be punished, too, even if less harshly because he’s the superior officer and the man; it would be assumed he was the one taking advantage of her. _But still_. They can bottle their feelings for awhile, if they have to.

* * *

Roy scribbles down his frustrations and burns them as he lays awake in his empty apartment on government-issue furniture. He’s actually glad to go to work in the morning. He needs the distraction.

He looks through personnel files, trying to get a handle on his new unit. Information. Intelligence. Communications. His C.O. is setting him up with a special task force, the kind that can handle infiltration and espionage. Because of who raised him, Roy is actually very good at that skill set, but his background isn’t common knowledge, and most people who look at him only see a firestarter.

He sets the paperwork aside and decides to see if he can get in to see the Lieutenant General. He has to wait a while, sipping at a cup of coffee Grumman’s secretary had offered him. When the door to the commander’s office finally opens, letting out several officers including an Alchemist Roy doesn’t recognize, the old man looks flustered. “Lieutenant Colonel Mustang. Come in.” Roy finishes the coffee and follows the Lieutenant General. His office is nice, the kind of thing Roy hopes he can look forward to one day in his future. There’s the desk of course, nearly as buried in paperwork as Roy’s own, but there’s also a table and chairs tucked into a corner, with a chessboard sitting on it.

“Do you play?” Grumman asks, immediately noticing Roy’s gaze lingering on the board.

“Some. It’s been a while.”

“Care for a game?”

Roy shrugs. “If you’d like,” he says carefully. If his commanding officer wants to play chess, he can indulge the man. And maybe Grumman will be more likely to share information over a casual game than under direct inquiry.

Grumman sits down at the table and Roy slips into the chair across from him. The Lieutenant General tells Roy to take White, so he does, and he carefully considers his first move as Grumman sets up the board. Roy moves his pawn. Grumman moves his. They play for a few more turns.

“I’ve heard good things about you, Mustang,” Grumman says.

Roy frowns. Makes a move. Looks up, but doesn’t quite meet the man’s eye. “What’ve you heard?”

Grumman laughs softly. “‘Hero of Ishval,’ right? That’s what they call you? They say your actions on that battlefield are directly responsible for the lives of hundreds of our men and women. Plenty of stories say you put yourself in harm’s way while ordering those under you not to follow.”

Roy shrugs. “It was safer for them to stay behind me. Tactically smarter, too.”

“So you’ll protect your people at the cost of your own safety?”

“Isn’t that what a soldier is supposed to do?”

“A soldier, yes. Not a State Alchemist. You’re too valuable for that, you know.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” When Grumman doesn’t answer, Roy sighs. “I know there are those who make us out to be like… gods, or something. But I’m not. I’m just a human being, like anybody else.”

“A human being who can spark a fire with a snap of his fingers.”

Roy captures one of Grumman’s black pieces. “Why’re you giving me a spy team?”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Who do you want me to spy on? And _why_?”

The Lieutenant General doesn’t answer. And he continues to not answer as they finish the game, which Roy knows he’s lost well before he actually loses.

“This isn’t a temporary transfer, is it?” Roy asks, as Grumman packs away the board.

“Not if I can help it,” the Lieutenant General agrees.


	14. Chapter 14

Mustang picks up the ringing telephone.

“He didn't kill me,” the man on the other end says without preamble, before Roy’s done more than open his mouth to greet the caller.

“Maes?”

“He could have killed me. He _almost_ killed me. But he didn’t. Why?”

“Well… you're not an Alchemist, are you?”

Hughes blows out a breath. “You really think it's as simple as that?”

“I don't know, Maes, I'm not a serial killer. And I'm not supposed to have anything to do with the investigation, remember? And aren’t you supposed to be on leave? Recovering?”

“I’m recovered.”  
  
“Maes.”   
  
“I’m fine. I think he's left Central.”

“Are you sure?”

“It's just a feeling. But people tend to trust my feelings, Roy.”

“I know,” Roy loops the phone cord around his fingers and tries not to be overly worried. He hates being separated from his friend. They’re supposed to be a _team_ , him and Hughes. “I don't suppose you have any specific _feeling_ about where he went?”

“I thought you weren't touching the investigation.”

“I'm just worried.”

“If either of us should be worried, it’s me.”

Roy leans his head against the back of his chair. “You think he’s headed for East?”

Maes doesn’t answer right away. Roy can picture the look on his face, the one he gets when he’s working through a problem. “If anybody _asked_ me, I’d say moving all your targets from one pen to a different pen doesn’t solve anything. You wanna scatter the Alchemists, split ‘em up all around the country, make ‘em hard to target. Anybody can get on a train. He could be there within a day, if that’s what he’s planning.”

Roy lifts his thumb and forefinger to his forehead, trying to ward away an oncoming headache. “I’ll do what I can, Hughes.”

On the other end of the phone, Maes sighs. Roy can hear the worry in that sigh. Hughes hates this as much as he does. “Elicia’s crawling now.”

“That’s great.”

“You sound tired, Roy.”

“Just been busy. Moving. Work. It sounds like I’ll be in East for a long time. It sounds like… _years_ , Maes.”

“Could be worse,” after a long-ish pause.

“I don’t see how.”

“You could be buried in snow up at the wall. Or… just be glad they haven’t sent the Alchemists out to the western border war.”

Roy’s stomach tightens into an angry knot at just the thought of that. “People would riot. Ishval was bad enough. And the eastern border’s not secure anyway, that’s why I’m _here_.”

“I’m just saying, it _could_ be worse. Maybe Gracia and I can come visit some time. I’ll take some leave.”

“You haven’t taken leave since I _met_ you, Hughes. I don’t know how Gracia puts up with it.”

“Because she’s perfect and she loves me.” Roy smiles, and rolls his eyes even though he knows Maes can’t see it. “Take care of yourself, Mustang. Remember, phones work both ways.”

“Yeah. Take care of yourself, too, Hughes. Don’t work too hard.”

Roy sets the phone down on the cradle. He _misses_ Hughes. He’s in a new city, with no idea who his friends are, and he can’t even go out drinking. It’s downright depressing, all told. He sighs, scrubs his face with his hands, and glances up at Riza as she enters his new office.

“I have a meeting, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine.”

Riza escorts him to the meeting, a briefing that includes a pretty impressive range of officers, from Lieutenant General Grumman down to Hawkeye herself, most of whom are Ishval veterans. Grumman has tacked a series of photographs and written reports from the border camps up onto the wall. “As I’m sure you all know, a little over two weeks ago, a small strike team of Ishvalan insurgents attacked our forces at the refugee camps on the border. Three of our sentries were killed and a dozen men injured, but we’re still trying to work out the exact motive for the attack and the likelihood of another. The Fuhrer wants this team to lay out his options. Do we retaliate? If so, specifically how? How do we ensure the safety of our people in the region?”

“He’s asking?” Roy mutters, quietly disbelieving.

Grumman meets his eye. “Lieutenant Colonel Mustang?”

Roy stands up a little straighter and glances at Hawkeye briefly, out of the corner of his eye. She gives him a nod of encouragement. “If we’re serious about safety, we have to defend and protect, not attack. The deep deserts don’t belong to us, if we try to chase the Ishvalans into them, we don’t stand a chance.” The other veterans around him nod agreement. Even during the war, they stuck close to populated areas, knowing better than to stray too far from their own supply lines. “We don’t even know how many of them are out there. They’re resourceful, fierce fighters, they’ve got strategists to match any of our academy graduates. There’s a reason they fought us to a standstill for seven years.”

“Yeah, but there can’t be that many _left_ ,” someone at the far end of the room says. Roy can’t tell who it is, there are too many people between them. He just shrugs. 

“So then, looking for them is even more suicidal. It’s looking for a needle in a sandstorm. An _armed_ needle.” He shakes his head. “Make the camps defensible - _really_ defensible, not just a token watchtower or two. Send more troops in if you have to, but not past the border. Don’t break the treaty. Make them hit us, if they want their revenge so badly.”

“You’re saying build a wall? Like at Fort Briggs.”

Mustang snorts. “Well, I don’t think anybody can build a wall like _that_ wall. But yes. I’m suggesting a similar strategy.”

Lieutenant General Grumman nods something that might be agreement. A few more ideas are tossed around, but for the most part it seems like the veterans are willing to back the Hero of Ishval’s recommendation. Roy’s glad. He wants nothing to do with starting another war.

Grumman signals him to stay while the rest of the briefing clears out. “If you go out there, it could mean a promotion.”

“I _was_ there,” Roy points out. “Command recalled me. They want me firmly on home ground, I guess.”

“Can you blame them?”

Roy shrugs. “I’m not complaining,” he insists. “If I never see Ishval again, it’ll be too soon.”

Grumman nods. “Your Fullmetal Alchemist is on his way back here. Should be on the next train. In fact, go meet him at the train station, would you? You can get him settled.”

Roy’s headache intensifies. “He’s not _mine_. And he’s with Major Armstrong, I’m sure he’s fine.”

“He reports to you, Mustang.”

Roy sighs. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

Roy is used to Edward Elric behaving with all the subtlety of a force of nature, stomping into his office and bristling with arrogance. So when the kid slips into the room with barely a sound, Roy takes notice. In fact, he hasn’t said a word since Roy collected him from Armstrong at the train station.

“Fullmetal,” he says quietly.

Ed looks up at him, and Roy frowns. The kid looks upset, although he always does, but it’s more than that. He looks… not broken, but close. Hopeless. Roy sighs.

“Come, sit down,” he insists.

“Did you _know_?” Ed asks.

“Know what?”

“That the Philosopher’s Stone’s made from _killing people_.”

“I… _what_?”

Ed sits on the edge of Roy’s couch, quiet and small. He swallows hard. “That’s what Doctor Marcoh said,” he whispers. “He said that’s what Ishval was for.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Roy says, one of the rare occasions where he speaks without thinking.

“I’m not _lying_ ,” Ed snaps. “You can ask Major Armstrong, he was there!”

“I didn’t… I wasn’t…” Roy sighs. “I wasn’t accusing you of lying, Fullmetal.”

“So you didn’t know.” Roy shakes his head. Ed sighs. “Figures,” he mutters. He lays back on the couch and looks up at the ceiling, his automail arm resting on his stomach while his flesh-and-blood arm dangles from the side of the couch. He lets his eyes slipped closed. “I just thought, when we figured out the Philosopher’s Stone, that we’d be able to get our bodies back, that’s all. And now…”

Roy sighs. He sits down at the edge of it. Edward pulls his feet up to make room for him.

“So the answer you thought you were looking for is not the one you need,” Roy muses. “This happens to alchemists all the time. You just have to keep searching, then.”

“I’m not researching theories for fun, Mustang. I’m trying to get my brother’s body back!” Ed sits up, and Roy’s glad to hear a little bit of fire back in his voice.

“Just so long as you aren’t giving up. I don’t need anyone so weak as to give up after one setback under my command.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Roy sighs. “You’re scared you’ll never find another answer, aren’t you? You’re wondering if you should just use the Philosopher’s Stone, even knowing the terrible truth about its origins. You think you might not ever get another chance like this one.”

Ed frowns, feeling the unsteady beating of his heart. He nods, loose strands of messy blonde hair falling into his eyes. His left hand is curled into a loose fist, and he looks thoughtful. Roy is very aware in this moment that Edward is only twelve years old. “It’s more than that, though,” Ed says, like a student working through a problem, like an alchemist. Roy perches himself on the arm of the couch and listens to Edward talking. “It’s… I don’t even think the Philosopher’s Stone would _work_. I asked Doctor Marcoh about it, I asked him everything I could think of, and it sounds like… if I _had_ Al’s body, I could put his soul back into it, with the stone, but I don’t _have_ it. It’s… gone somewhere. And I don’t know how to get it back, and I don’t even know how to start looking. I’ve been researching and researching but there’s no mention of… I don’t know if anybody else has ever seen what I’ve seen.”

“What you’ve seen?” Roy repeats, his eyes narrowed.

Ed looks up at him. “Yeah. There was this… door, thing. The Gate. I don’t know how I know it’s called that, but it is. And it’s how alchemy works, when you do a transmutation, it’s like… whatever you give up… it goes through the gate. And there’s this… _thing_ , that lives inside of it. A monster. It called itself Truth.”

Roy listens to the way Ed’s breathing changes as he talks about it, growing harsher and more ragged. This _monster_ , whatever it is, it terrifies him. Roy meets the boy’s eyes and tries to look reassuring. “That sounds…” he starts. Implausible, he wants to say. Like a child’s nightmare. Definitely not connected to anything Roy’s ever heard about alchemy.

But he’s already said he wasn’t accusing the boy of lying.

“Whatever,” Ed mutters. “I don’t care if you believe me.”

“I believe you Edward,” Roy says quietly. He surprises himself by meaning it.

Ed’s golden eyes glare in his direction. But there is fire in them, and Roy thinks Ed hasn’t given up after all.

Both of them look up at the sound of someone clearing their throat in the doorway of the office. A blonde-haired girl stands in the doorway.

She won’t look at Mustang, which he understands, and he quickly pretends he has urgent business elsewhere. He does acknowledge her presence with a nod and a strained “Miss Rockbell,” as he pushes past her to get out the door.

“What are you doing here, Winry?” Ed asks, once Mustang has gone. “Are you… are you okay?”

She sits down heavily on the couch, looking up at him with eyes shadowed by something that might be guilt. Ed frowns. He’s never seen Winry look like that before.

“The military forced me to come here. For my safety, they said.” She scowls at the idea of anyone telling her what she can or cannot do, like she can’t be responsible for her own safety, and Edward understands. He puts his arm around her, hesitantly, but when she doesn’t shake him off, he lets it stay.

“Do you… wanna tell me what happened?” He raises an eyebrow, tucks his legs under his body, and tries to get comfortable. He’s glad to see her again anyway. Even if she’s angry about… whatever happened. “I mean, I heard _something_ did. Everybody’s worried about Ishval.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“Okay…”

“You didn’t even _ask_ , Edward.”  
  
“I figured if you were, you’d have said something?”

She smacks his chest, and he winces and shakes his head. “I’m glad you’re not hurt,” he says, playing with her hair. “Are you going back home? To Resembool?”  
  
“I don’t know, Ed. I have people counting on me in Ishval.”

“Still. It might be a long time before you can go back.”

“You’re trying to get rid of me?”

“I just figured… why would you want to stay in East City?” She glares at him until he gulps, and blushes slightly. “Oh. Because I’m here?”

“ _Yes_ , because you’re here. And because the military’s here and I can’t really hide from the situation. I can't just go back to Resembool and pretend... Not now that I’ve been there.”

“You’re not in the military, though.”

“ _Obviously_.”

And she knows there won’t be any loopholes for her, not like Edward, who has managed to get into a uniform at the age of twelve on a technicality: no one ever expected a pre-adolescent would be able to pass the State Alchemist exam. If she wants to go into a combat zone to practice medicine, she’ll need _years_ of medical school and bureaucratic proof that she’s a licensed automail mechanic, which the government won’t give to a twelve-year-old no matter how good she is. And automail is not medically necessary anyway, so even if she _did_ join the military, they’d put her in a military hospital somewhere like East City and they certainly wouldn’t let her use their resources to treat civilians who aren’t even Amestrian.

She never expected helping people to be this complicated.

“Winry?” Ed asks, obviously worried.

“Do you know how my parents died, Ed?”

“Um… in the war…” he starts, but obviously there’s more to it than that or she wouldn’t be looking at him the way she is.

“They were murdered by an Amestrian soldier. Killed by _our fucking army_ because they were trying to _help people_.”

“Win…”

“If my parents were still alive, they wouldn’t have let the military tell them to stop helping people!”

Ed bites his lip, trying to work through that. Her parents _aren’t_ still alive, because they took that stand. And they swore the same oath of obedience Ed did, because you have to, to get a military commision. And Winry did not, because she’s twelve. A civilian, not a combat medic.

“You can’t fight the military, Win,” he says. Ed’s never scared to fight, but even he’s a dog of the military, and he has to do what he’s told. He’s just lucky Mustang’s never made it an issue, not really. “And... they really are just trying to keep you safe. I’m glad you’re safe,” he adds, when she doesn’t reply.

She nods. “It was scary, Ed. Everything was so _loud_. Explosions and guns and screaming. And there was a lot of smoke. And… well, I never actually saw a dead body before.”

Images threaten at the edges of Ed’s consciousness. He tenses up. He forces them back.

Winry notices the hitch in his breathing, and turns around to face him. “Ed?”

“It sounds scary,” he manages to say.

A young soldier wearing glasses knocks on the edge of the open office door. “Miss Rockbell?”

Winry sits up, pulling away from Ed in one smooth motion. “Yes?” Her confusion is evident, and she glances back at Ed as if he can help her somehow. He just shrugs.

Kain Fuery pushes his glasses up his nose. “I’m here to escort you to the interview room. So you can give your statement.”

“What statement?” Ed asks suspiciously.

Winry shakes her head. “It’s okay, Ed. I’m just supposed to tell them what I saw. What happened during the attack, you know? They don’t have very many eyewitnesses coming back to East City.”

Ed still doesn’t look happy, but he nods. Winry follows the sergeant out of Colonel Mustang’s office, leaving Ed alone. After ten more minutes of sitting on Mustang’s couch, he decides to go find Al. The two of them wait for Winry on the steps of Eastern Command, and then they walk through the city listening to Winry list all the things she wants Ed to buy for her.

He just rolls his eyes. “It’s a _research_ stipend, Win. Not unlimited credit for my girlfriend’s shopping sprees.”

“Remind me how much your automail cost again?”

“I’m _paying_ you _back_.”

“You can pay me back with tools. And jewelry. And clothes! Come on, Ed. You know I can’t get anything good in Resembool, everything’s made of _wool_.”

“Pick one thing,” Ed finally growls. Winry’s arms flung around him makes it worth the cost.


	15. Chapter 15

Al never sleeps. The room is small, only one bed, because Ed hasn’t gotten around to finding one for Al yet. The military dorms weren’t designed to accommodate twelve-year-old officers and the little brothers who tag along after them, apparently. Al knows he’s only _allowed_ to follow Ed around because Lieutenant Colonel Mustang doesn’t prevent it. He’s grateful. He worries that one day Ed will actually have to act like he’s in the military, instead of being allowed to do mostly whatever he’d do anyway. Soldiers kill people.

Al couldn’t feel the heat of Ishval, but he stays awake enough nights ruminating on what he’d seen there. The Ishvalan kids he’d talked to were mostly too young to remember much beyond impressions condensed into single-word cautionary tales: “fire,” “hurt,” “run,” “dead,” or “gone.” All of them had lost family members, friends, neighbors, their entire world, really.

Al knows what it’s like to lose someone, and he also holds vague impressions of war: soldiers marching in the streets, a bombed-out train station, Winry’s stubborn refusal to let him help her after she got into a fight in second grade, the week after her parents left.

Pinako dealt with the war the same way she dealt with everything: with stubborn practicality. She’d suddenly become the sole provider for three children, and if the military wanted her automail, they could damn well pay for it. She’d slammed the door in more than one officer’s face, well before she ever met Roy Mustang. She taught Winry and Al how to read a ration card, though, taught them ways of re-using and re-making that had nothing to do with transmutation. Ed never paid attention to that kind of thing. He was always single-mindedly focused on alchemy, on getting their mom back, no matter what.

Even now, Al is sure he pays more attention than Ed does; he knows he sees things that his brother doesn’t see. Not just because he stays up all night, either. It because he actually _looks_ , and Ed… it always seems like Ed’s afraid of what he might see if he lets his eyes drift from his self-determined horizon. Every conversation they have always circles back to getting their bodies back. Al knows Ed blames himself for not being able or willing to use the Philosopher’s Stone to do it.

Al wants his body back. He does. It's just not the only thing he wants. He's had a lot of time to think about it.

He sits on the floor, metal back against the wall, metal arms resting on metal knees, not sleeping.

Ed thrashes and kicks his way through a nightmare and screams “I'm fine!” at Al when he offers tentative help.

Al doesn't dream, but he thinks that if he did, he’d probably have nightmares too.

* * *

“Can I, um… talk to you?” Ed asks awkwardly the next morning, as he corners Second Lieutenant Hawkeye while she's making coffee. Al is chasing after some stray cat he’d seen on their way back from breakfast. Ed’s happy to leave him to it.

“Of course, Major Elric,” Hawkeye says, sounding serious as ever.

Ed frowns, shifting uncomfortably. He reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. “You don’t have to call me that. No one calls me that.”

Riza frowns. “What do people call you, then?”

He shrugs. “Fullmetal, usually. Or Edward, sometimes. You can call me Edward.”

Hawkeye smiles. Normally, she’s very careful to pay attention to the chain of command, even among her friends. But although Edward Elric is a Major, he’s also a twelve year old boy, so she thinks it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to relax protocol a little, for him.

“Okay, Edward. What can I do for you?”

He still looks slightly embarrassed, and Riza frowns again. She shifts in her chair, and studies his face. He sighs. “Okay, so you’re… whatever, with the Lieutenant Colonel?”

Riza raises an eyebrow. “ _Whatever_?”

“Dating? I don’t know.”

“I... “ she sighs. “Have you read the military regulations, Edward?”

He rolls his eyes. “I know you’re not supposed to be… whatever. But you are.”

“Yes...” Riza admits, wondering where the boy is going with this.   
  
Ed nods, satisfied. “Okay. So… you know he gets these nightmares?”

She tenses up, a little. But then she nods. “Yes. You two shared a tent in Ishval, I take it?”

“Does it happen all the time?”

“No. Not all the time.” Riza softens a bit. “You don’t have to worry about him, Edward. He’s very… competent.”

“Did you really just say fucking ‘ _competent’_? I’m not… I’m not saying he can’t do his job!”

“So what are you saying?”

“That…” Ed sighs and looks down at his automail hand, opening and closing until he stills the motion and looks back up at Riza. “I guess that I know what it’s like. To get caught up in shit. Nightmares and whatever.”

Riza’s eyes narrow. “And why are you telling me this, instead of him?”

“Because he’s my _commanding officer_ and that seems to matter, now that we’re not in Ishval anymore. And I just figured… I thought if anybody knows how to make this shit go away, it might be you.”

Riza is silent for a long moment. When she does open her mouth, all she can say is “Oh.”

“Never mind,” Ed mutters. “Just forget I said anything.”  
  
“No, wait. Edward.” He turns back to her, still tense. “If you can distract yourself as soon as you notice what’s happening, sometimes that’s best. Count, slowly. Count your breaths. Or recite poetry, or the periodic table, or your favorite recipes, anything really. Anything that’s going to pull your attention away from the nightmare. If you can’t open your eyes, focus on what you _feel_. The texture of the sheets, the wall behind you, anything you can touch. And… it might help you to get a dog.”

Ed frowns. “We’re not talking about Mustang anymore, are we?”

Riza holds his gaze. She isn’t ashamed by what she’s admitting. She’d be more worried if she _wasn’t_ haunted by Ishval. “His are worse than mine,” she says, truthfully. “But… I do understand some of what you’re going through. Both of you.”

“Thanks,” Ed says.

Riza watches him go, her heart twisting a little at the knowledge that he’s only a child, far too young to have to be dealing with this kind of trauma. “You’re welcome, Edward,” she murmurs to the empty room.

* * *

  
Roy looks again at the drawing of the tattoo Maes had drawn. He flips it over, and frowns when he notices for the first time that there’s writing there, so tiny that it’s easy to miss. _Amestris is wrong._ It’s not in Maes’ familiar handwriting either. Did the suspect write it, before he disappeared? It’s no surprise an Ishvalan would write that. But it nags at Roy, all the same.

He flips the drawing back over at stares at Maes’ careful transcription of the scarred Ishvalan’s inked array. Pieces of it are recognizable: the twisted caduceus of human transmutation (and _that’s_ unsettling, though not entirely surprising given that the man had been deconstructing humans), lots of sets of three, repeating, which… a triangle symbolizes fire. This isn’t so clear-cut, but the triangle-like shapes at least point to the idea of destructive alchemy: Kimblee’s arrays are rooted in a triangle, too. But a transmutation circle has to be… well, a _circle_. And this… there are loops, and helixes, but no closed systems. There are characters he recognizes as being Ishvalan, and characters he recognizes as being neither Ishvalan nor Amestrian but cannot otherwise identify. There’s “terra,”: “earth,” which makes a certain kind of sense given that most alchemists understand that their power comes from the earth, from the shifting energies of the land itself. Power through an unclosed system. Stopping at the second stage. From all appearances, the Ishvalan alchemist isn’t not completing transmutations because he’s deciding to stop, but because he _can’t_ move on. But that doesn’t make any sense. Who the hell would go through the trouble of designing a transmutation array that doesn’t transmute? And someone designed this. That much is clear. The only place he’s seen anything this complex is on Riza’s back, the kind of experimental alchemy that creates something entirely new and takes a lifetime to develop. And, like with Riza’s tattoo, it’ll probably take months of concentrated study to fully decipher. And he’ll need help, the resources of the First Branch, if nothing else.

State Alchemists can request authorization to travel for research purposes if it doesn’t conflict with the military’s needs. Can he justify this? It might help them find the serial killer they’re so desperately hunting. But he just got here. It seems unlikely, bordering on impossible, that High Command would let him go back to Central now.

He folds the drawing up and sticks it in his coat pocket, then steps out into the drenching spring downpour. The dark clouds make it feel like night still clings to the early morning, just past dawn. He’s soaked through in what feels like seconds, because he wasn’t smart enough to think about an umbrella, apparently. He isn’t even sure he owns an umbrella. He always just shares with Riza. The raindrops patter off of the concrete pathways leading from his small apartment to the main Command building. There’s no avoiding the puddles, so by the time he makes it to his destination he has wet boots as well as a sopping wet wool uniform. He tacks the paper - also wet - up on the board in his office and sits down in his chair, scowling.

“For fuck’s sake, Mustang, you’re leaving puddles on the floor!” says a voice from the doorway a minute or two later.

Roy sighs. “Good morning, Edward.”

The boy rolls his eyes. “You know you can dry clothes with alchemy?”

Roy settles back in his chair. He raises an eyebrow. “ _How_?”

“Don’t you play with heat and air for a living?”

“It has never occured to me to set my clothes on fire, Fullmetal.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ed is already wandering over to the board and the sketch tacked up to it. “The hell is this?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“You don’t know what it does?”

“It… explodes people,” Roy says. “Deconstructs them, more accurately.”

“Deconstructs them,” Ed repeats. “What the fuck, Mustang?”

Roy shrugs. “The serial killer hunting State Alchemists. He’s from Ishval. And he’s using that,” he says, nodding toward the drawing, “as his weapon.”

Ed glares at the drawing, the looks back up at Roy. “It’s complicated as shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But deconstruction’s simple. So what _else_ does it do?”

“Like I said: that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

The complexity of the task could easily overwhelm him if he lets it. _Months_ of concentrated study. Except that Mustang is a soldier before he’s an Alchemist. It’s always been that way. He can’t devote his full attention to this puzzle because he’s got a new special operations unit to break in and the possibility of a border war looming harsh on the horizon.

“There are parts of that code that are Ishvalan,” he muses.

“Well, that makes sense. You said this guy’s Ishvalan, right?”

“But Ishvalans don’t have alchemists.”

“Obviously they _do_.”

Obviously. The certainty of Ed’s offhand statement hits Roy like a cold shock. _Obviously they do._ He’d already told Maes that this killer doesn’t think like any Amestrian alchemist would. The array tattooed on the man’s arm is unlike anything Roy’s ever seen. But if Ed’s right, their fugitive might be the key to an entire foreign language, a whole new conception of alchemy _that shouldn’t exist_.

Fuck. He needs to talk to an Ishvalan, someone who can give him a crash course in language and culture and religion and the libraries’ worth of knowledge that probably existed before he burned it all down to the ground… sure, Mustang. That’ll happen.

Fuck.

“If the Ishvalans had alchemists, why didn’t we see any evidence of them during the war?” he asks quietly.

Ed shrugs. “How the fuck should I know?”

Roy stares back at the sketched array and thinks about what he knows. Deconstruction by touch. That’s a dangerous game to play against a hostile foreign army. Most of the Amestrians never got close enough to touch. So maybe that’s why. _But what else does it do?_

This’ll take research he can’t do today. But Scar won’t be able to come within a city block of any military installation without running afoul of a shoot on sight order, so trying to decipher his array is really more about Mustang’s personal curiosity than a matter of national security, much as it pains him to admit it.

But… Ishval had alchemists. Might they _still_? Out there in the deep deserts, where the Amestrians won’t go… what kind of alchemy wouldn’t fight back against its total annihilation?

“Does any of that look familiar to you?” he asks Ed. Roy has recognized the obvious marker of human transmutation, but Ed’s actually _done_ it, so there might be subtleties he notices that Mustang wouldn’t have caught.

But he just shakes his head. Mustang sighs.

Ed frowns up at him. “You want me to figure it out?”

“If you can figure it out without leaving East HQ, be my guest.”

“All the alchemy stuff’s in Central, though.” Roy nods, his mind already spinning out in several different directions. “But… all the Ishval stuff is here?” Roy looks up again. That hadn’t occurred to him. But then, it’s been years since he’s spent any significant time in a library. “If I crack this for you, you fucking owe me, Mustang.”

“Crack this for me, and I’ll recommend you for promotion.”

“Yay?”

“What do you want from me, Elric? Promotion or extra leave are about all I can hope to offer.”

“Extra pay?” Not that Ed has much to spend it on beside paying Winry and Granny back for his automail, and saving up for whatever happens when Al gets his body back and needs a home and food and probably an education. But it’s at least practical, unlike an extra star or whatever on the uniform he doesn’t wear.

“If you’re promoted.”

Ed rolls his eyes. “Fucking _military_.” He pulls the drawing from the wall and raises a questioning eyebrow at Mustang, who nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Of course he will. Because if there _are_ secret Ishvalan alchemists who tattoo the symbols of human transmutation on their bodies… that might help Ed reach his goal, too.

Roy watches the Fullmetal Alchemist leave his office and scrubs his face with his hands. His wet uniform still clings to his skin and smells like a recently-showered sheep, joy of joys. He’s toying with the idea of trying to dry his clothes with alchemy like Ed suggested, when the sound of the outer office door opening, and Havoc’s familiar voice, interrupts the thought. Another man is talking to Havoc, and their laughter and chatter is easy and comfortable.

Roy slides out of his chair and leans against the doorway of his inner office, watching his two subordinates, one familiar and one not familiar yet, as they banter back and forth.

“Oh hey, boss,” Havoc says, glancing up. He has a huge grin on his face. “You’ve met Heymans, right? Did you know we went to the academy together?”

Heymans - Second Lieutenant Breda - snaps a salute. Mustang nods acknowledgement, but keeps most of his attention focused on Havoc.

“Should I be worried?” he asks cautiously. Because hell… if Havoc and Breda “went to the academy together” like he and Hughes did, he could be in some real trouble. Havoc by himself is almost too much to handle at times. Reunited with an old buddy, he could be beyond Mustang’s power to control.

Breda shakes his head slightly, and Havoc rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry. Heymans is barely any fun at all.” The red haired lieutenant snorts softly but does not deny that assessment. “You trust me, right, Lieutenant Colonel?” Havoc pleads.

“Against all better judgement, I do.”

“We’re a good team, Breda and me. Whatever you need.”

Mustang nods. He steps fully into the outer office and sits atop a currently unused desk. None of his new team have claimed a workstation yet. Mustang isn’t even entirely sure yet what their work _is_.

“I’ve taken a look at your file,” he tells Breda. “You’re a…”  
  
“Spy. Sir.”

Roy smiles, impressed by the honesty. “I figured a spy would be a little less up front about it.”

Breda shrugs. “You said you read the file.”

“Rank 1 at the academy. That’s impressive.”

“I test well.”

“I don’t,” Mustang points out, and Havoc just grins.

“Told you Mustang’s the easiest C.O. you’ll ever have. I mean, most likely to get you killed, but he’s just a regular guy. Except for the alchemy shit.”

“You wanna tell me - us - what we need to know about East, Lieutenant Breda?” Roy asks.

“You talking about the region, or HQ?”

Mustang shoots Havoc a look, but the other man just shrugs. “I meant the region, but _is_ there anything I need to know about HQ?”

“Lieutenant General Grumman is a lot smarter than people think. Don’t underestimate him. Other than that, there’s not much I can tell you. I don’t spend a lot of my time at base camp, ordinarily. Guess it’ll be different now, being assigned a permanent team and all.”

“So you’ve been out in the field for the last four years?”

“Most of it, yeah. Eastern Region’s tricky. Volatile. Nobody likes to talk about it, but the Ishval war spilled pretty damn far past our border before we got it locked down. Military overreacted, and civilians got caught in the crossfire. People here think of the boys in blue as their enemy as much or more than the Ishvalans. Most of ‘em had friends and neighbors with Ishvalan blood, sometimes going back generations. Our scorched earth policy didn’t endear us to any of the people here.”

“Nobody’s inciting rebellion, though?”

Breda shrugs. “Not yet. You’d have to be right stupid to go up against the people who’d just wiped a whole nation off the map, wouldn’t you?”

Havoc’s watching Mustang with a worried look on his face. Roy just sighs, his stomach constricting with familiar worry and guilt, but the quiet kind. Breda’s right. The Fuhrer waited too long and then overreacted, and his hold on East is shaky now, because of it. Maybe High Command coming out here wasn’t just a trick to intimidate the Ishvalans. It’s unsettling to think that the people of Amestris need intimidating, too. But there are a _lot_ of little fires burning, and any one of them could flare up into a new Ishval.

“What’s the general think?” he asks softly.

Breda’s watching him with the discerning eye of someone who’s used to learning a lot by watching people. But everyone knows about Roy’s history in Ishval, his likely reactions to this topic wouldn’t be hard for anyone to guess. “You’d have to ask him,” the information specialist says.

Roy nods. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Breda nods slowly. “Let me know if you need anything else, sir.”


	16. Chapter 16

The mess is crowded, the staff of East now sharing with what feels like half of Central Command and most of the State Alchemists. It makes the place feel closer to a war camp than Roy likes. He doesn’t actually recognize most of the Alchemists. Most of them are solitary creatures by nature, and there’s a noticeable age gap due to the fact that, until Ed Elric showed up, Roy was the youngest ever State Alchemist by a several year margin. Even in Ishval, they didn’t mingle, except here and there on joint missions with others assigned to their sector. For Roy, that was Armstrong and Kimblee. And Armstrong was discharged and Kimblee’s in jail, because Roy’s luck with friends is just that good. On the increasingly rare occasions when he does socialize, it’s always with regular soldiers like Hughes and Havoc, and, obviously, Riza.

Roy grabs his coffee and takes it out to the hall, sipping at it as he heads back toward his office. He’s only been here a week or so, and already he’s buried in field reports and personnel files and requisitions and orders and so much fucking _paperwork_ it makes him want to cry. None of the recruiting officers ever mention paperwork when they’re luring young men to the enlistment offices or proctoring the academy’s entrance exam.

“Lieutenant Colonel?” He turns toward the sound of the woman’s voice. Lieutenant General Grumman’s secretary. “Can you come in for a chat, sir?”

He frowns. “A chat?”

She shrugs, and leads him into the commander’s office, where the chessboard is already set up and Roy’s superior officer is slouched in his a chair in a posture Roy might almost call “lounging.” The mustached man looks up and smiles when he sees Roy.

“Come in,” he says, waving toward the empty seat. Roy sits. After a minute, he picks up a chess piece and holds it while he studies his C.O., looking for some hint of what this is about.   
  
“You gonna make a move or what?” is the only answer he receives.  
  
The game unfolds.   
  
Roy slowly sips his coffee as he plays, and he wonders what the man is looking for, in him. He’s got a thousand other things to do besides working his rusty chess skills, which Grumman has to know considering he’s the one who assigned most of that work. Yet here they are.

And soon enough, it’s obvious that Lieutenant General Grumman does not like having the Fuhrer and his top lackeys taking over his command. “I don’t like all this attention on me,” he complains to Mustang over his own cup of coffee, and the chessboard.

Roy shrugs. It’s not really his place to speak ill of anyone in High Command. But at Grumman’s non-verbal prompting, he realizes he has to say _something_. He clears his throat. “Is there any particular reason for that, sir?”

“Here in East, we’re not much for ceremony. Usually.”

Roy remembers what Riza’d said about this commander’s reputation for playing loose with regulations, and he nods. “I think I understand,” he says quietly. He captures one of Grumman’s pawns and adds it to his very small collection. He pretends to study the chessboard while trying to figure out how to phrase his observations diplomatically. “East is probably very different from Central,” is what he settles on.   
  
Grumman smiles. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Central, but from what I recall it’s a lot of ass-kissing and politics. Out here, we work hard. Promotions are earned, not traded or bargained for. And I trust my people. No one needs an old man like me questioning his every move out in the field.”

“That’s remarkably…” Different, Roy thinks. Refreshing.

“It’s political suicide, is what it is,” Grumman says flatly. “East is where military careers go to die, as you well know.”

“Except when it isn’t,” Roy says quietly. No one wants to end up in East, but it also bred a fair number of Central’s mid-ranking officers and even a significant percentage of the upper echelons of the military hierarchy. Because East, the most culturally diverse, and therefore the most turbulent, region of Amestris, becomes their “perfect offense.” People come to East to fight. There’s no avoiding it.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Mustang,” Grumman confirms, as he puts Roy in checkmate.

Roy finishes his coffee in one swallow and thanks his C.O. for the game.

They probably both have work to do.

* * *

“Major Elric.” Ed wraps his arms around his upper body, his automail arm now blatantly obvious as he looks up at the Fuhrer. He doesn’t salute, or say “sir,” or any of that bullshit. He just waits for the man to talk, if he’s going to. “Did you find anything interesting in Xenotime?”

“You know everywhere I go. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

A dark shadow crosses the Fuhrer’s face, although that false smile is still pasted on. It sets the hairs on the back of Ed’s neck to prickling. He glares at the leader of the nation, unintimidated in the way that only the young and stupid can be.

“I did promise to keep an eye on you, Fullmetal.” Well, that much is true. In the immediate aftermath of Ed’s alchemy exam, he’d said it while clapping the twelve-year-old on the shoulder and offering him a hearty congratulations. Ed hadn’t yet realized it was a threat.

“What do you _want_?” he spits out through clenched teeth.

“Now, now. Watch your tone. I’d hate to see you disciplined for insubordination.”

Ed rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake.”

The Fuhrer lifts his hand and for half a second Ed’s certain the man is actually going to hit him, but then he just rests his hand on the sword at his hip and shakes his head. “There’s no reason for you to see me as an enemy, you know,” he says calmly. “We’re on the same side.”

“Is that why you’re spying on me?”

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Why do you care? Plenty of people get hurt every day in this country you’re so proud to be in charge of. I bet you don’t even notice.”

“Alchemists are a valuable resource. And you’re more talented than most.”

Ed shivers, though he doesn’t let the Fuhrer see. He raises an eyebrow. “You know I went to Ishval. I saw what you use alchemists’ talents for.”

“You swore an oath to defend Amestris.”

“Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yep. Does that include you?”

“That is _dangerously_ close to a treasonous remark.”

“Not if you’re not an enemy.”

“Everything I do is for the greater good of the country. You presume to judge me with your childish sense of morality? You’re a soldier, like it or not. Soldiers take lives.”

“I’m not your dog.”

The Fuhrer’s false smile contorts into an ugly snarl, and his eyes flash with rage. He is most definitely no longer the false image of a patient father figure. Ed knows he’s overstepped his bounds. He might be fucked.

He whirls around at the sound of booted footsteps approaching from the end of the long hall. “Mustang,” he breathes.

The Flame Alchemist snaps a salute and greets the Fuhrer, his dark eyes taking in the scene with quizzical concern.

“You might want to reinforce the importance of protocol with your subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel,” Fuhrer Bradley says. The rage is… not gone, but covered by the easy smoothness that makes him not only Amestris’ commander in chief but also its highest ranking politician.

“Apologies, sir,” Roy says, just as smoothly. “I’ll get him out of your way.”

He doesn’t quite reach out to pull Ed away like a recalcitrant child, but there’s no mistaking the look on his face. And it’s not exactly like Ed wants to stick around here anyway.

“I didn’t-” he starts, as soon as their out of the Fuhrer’s earshot.

“Shut up, Fullmetal,” Mustang snaps.

“I didn’t even _do_ anything.”

“He’s the _Fuhrer_.”

“You’re scared of him,” Ed realizes.

“Of course I am. His word is law, Edward. He holds absolute power over every single person in this country, and he protects that power at all costs. If he thought for a second that you, or I, were a threat to him…

“It’s not like I’m trying to overthrow the government. I’m just… I’m _not_ trying to overthrow the government,” Ed repeats.

 _I am_ , Roy thinks, but he absolutely knows better than to say so aloud, even if he wanted to include a twelve-year-old child in those plans, which he doesn’t. Bad enough that Hughes and Riza, the two people he loves most in the world, are involved. He couldn’t do it without them, but they’re in just as much danger as he is if it all goes wrong. _Yes_ , he’s afraid of Fuhrer Bradley. He’s not ready to make his move, not yet, and if the Fuhrer realizes that his favorite dog is trying to slip his leash before he _is_ ready, no one close to Mustang will be safe from the man’s retaliation.

“Just be careful,” he says to Ed, because he does honestly care about the kid and doesn’t want to see him hurt. “It wouldn’t kill you to keep your mouth shut every once in a while.”

“Okay,” Ed says quietly. Because he can read how unsettled Mustang is, and it bothers him. It’s not that he thinks the Lieutenant Colonel doesn’t get scared, he knows otherwise, but… Mustang’s afraid of his own superiors. He recruited Ed into the military and then tried to take it back, and Ed _needs_ to be a State Alchemist so he can get Al’s body back, but that doesn’t mean he fails to notice that Mustang might not be able to protect him if ( _when?_ ) the Fuhrer’s orders conflict with Ed’s goal. When the Fuhrer looks at him, does he see a child, like Mustang does, or does he see an Alchemist?

Al’s read most of the military code, when he doesn’t sleep at night, and summarized the pertinent bits for Ed. So he knows that there is a minimum age of enlistment and that he’s below that minimum by several years, but he still has dogtags hanging around his neck and he doesn’t exactly know what that means, where the line is. He isn’t sure Mustang knows either. There’s no precedent for him.

He’ll do anything he has to do for Al. But if he turns into a killer, won’t Al hate him? Well, maybe not _hate_ him, Ed’s pretty sure Al doesn’t hate anybody. If Al doesn’t hate him already for being the whole fucking _reason_ he doesn’t have a body, then maybe nothing will ever make his brother look at him differently. But Ed still knows he’d never want Al to have to watch him use alchemy to kill. If he ever has to follow orders like the ones Mustang had to follow, he doesn’t want Al anywhere close to him. He doesn’t want _anyone_ close to him.

And with that realization, he thinks he understands Mustang a little bit better.

“How come you joined the military?” he asks, as the Lieutenant Colonel pushes open the door to his office.

Mustang looks briefly surprised, and then he just shrugs. “I wanted to make a difference.”

“Oh.”

“It was childish of me, but I was young at the time… older than you, but still young. And even still, I don’t think there’s any way around it. All the decisions in our country are made by the men and women who are very high up in the military. There’s no way to have any real influence without becoming one of them.”

“You’re still trying to protect people.”

Mustang sighs, and leans against the wall. He plays with the chain of his pocketwatch, at his hip. “I’ll keep trying for as long as I can. It’s about the only thing I can still do.”

Ed nods his understanding, and perches on top of a spare desk. “Mustang?” he says, as he traces his finger in tightly inscribed circles on the desk. “Thanks.”

“For what, Edward?”

“You know… for… I mean, not everybody would take care of me like you do.”

“Well. It is kind of my fault you’re in this mess.”

“Yeah, kinda. But still. If I have to have a commanding officer, I’m glad it’s you.”

“You’re welcome, Fullmetal.”


	17. Chapter 17

Ed wakes up crying, at least until he sticks his hand into his mouth and bites down to strangle his screams. He's sweat-soaked and terrified, and he blinks blearily into the darkness trying to calm himself down enough that he can stand up on shaky legs to look around. “Al?” he whispers. No response. Ed feels along the wall until he finds the light switch, where he snaps the light on and floods the room with brightness. There's not much to see: a military dorm like all the others, small bed slammed against the wall, a very tiny night stand, the chair Ed had dragged in as soon as he got to East City, and nothing else. He doesn't even have a footlocker, just the bag he's dragged across half of Amestris, it feels like. And the room is empty, except for him.   
  
Ed slips into the hall. He knows Al sometimes goes to the library to read or do research while he's sleeping. The library's a long walk from here. Not crossing a whole city long, but it is on the opposite side of the base from where he's standing. Ed wipes away the last of his tears with the back of his arm, and starts walking. Outside, the sky is dark and star-strewn through a light cloud cover.   
  
Ed isn't expecting anyone else to be there in the library with Al. He has no idea what time it is, but he knows it's very late. Yet despite the lateness of the hour, Winry's sitting across the small table from Al, engrossed in a book. Or at least she was until Ed came in. Now, she's laser-focused on him, frowning and obviously concerned. Oh sure, like she's one to talk. Ed rolls his eyes and moves from the doorway to the table. “What're you doing here, Ed?” Al asks.   
  
He shrugs. Like hell he's going to admit to having a fucking bad dream in front of Winry. He sits down in the chair at the end of the table and pulls the nearest book in front of him. Winry's abandoned her own book in favor of staring at him. “What?” he growls.

“You had a nightmare, didn't you?” If it's an accusation, it's a very gentle one, but Ed just glares at her.  
  
Al shoves his book to the middle of the table and pipes up, “Ed, she's just trying to help.”  
  
“Stay out of this,” Ed and Winry both snap. Winry gives Al a little shrug of apology, but she's fully focused on Ed.   
  
“Ed, you're safe,” she tells him, reaching out to take his hand.   
  
He doesn't pull away, but he does roll his eyes. “I fucking know that, Winry.”  
  
His anger is half-hearted, though, and Winry knows it. “Ed, you did live in my house for a _year_ after you got your automail installed. This isn't the first time I've seen you have a nightmare. You used to wake up screaming.”  
  
“He still does. A lot,” Al points out.  
  
“Shut _up_ , Al,” Ed snarls.   
  
Winry gets up and walks over to Ed's chair, so she can sling an arm around his shoulders. He looks up at her and scowls, but he does not protest or push her away. Whatever this dream was, it must have been particularly bad. “Do you wanna talk about it?” Winry says softly.   
  
“I really don't.”  
  
“Was it about Mom?” Al asks.  
  
“I said I don't want to talk about it!” Ed slams his fists down on the table, scattering pencils and notepaper and making Winry cross her arms and watch him with worry, and he swears to God, if she starts trying to lecture him...   
  
He squeezes his eyes shut to keep from crying, and then blinks them open again, shaking his head to clear it. He breathes, rough and ragged, and figures he never should have left his room. He doesn't want people to think he can't take care of himself. Well, except for Al. Al doesn't dream and doesn't remember what happened with Truth and the Gate. But this dream wasn't about that. For once.   
  
It _is_ about Mom. It's always about Mom. This time, the tangled mess of a human body that his failed attempt at alchemy created is one dead body among many, beckoning to him from the mass graves of Ishval. “I wasn't even there,” he whispered to those haunting accusers. They just stared at him with unseeing eyes because they're _dead_ , they can't do anything else. _“Soldiers follow orders, Fullmetal,”_ Mustang's voice taunted him. _“There's a difference between knowing and doing,”_ Dr. Marcoh said. But if you know something, you can't un-know it, and if soldiers follow orders, what choice does he have? Ed was tempted to throw his stupid pocketwatch into the hole but he couldn't move, until his eyes snapped open.  
  
His pocketwatch is still somewhere in the dorm room where he left it, haphazardly tangled in a pile with his red coat and black pants.  
  
He glances at Winry. “That attack, in Ishval... do you think there's going to be another war?”   
  
She shrugs, and then shakes her head. “I hope not.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ed mutters, looking over at Al. “Me, too.”

* * *

Lieutenant Colonel Emma Wright feels like she hasn’t slept in days, not since the military began sending in reinforcements to the border camps. The 23rd infantry battalion, out of East Command. And their C.O., Colonel William Avery, a serious, almost somber man Emma has never met. The 23rd is staffed by a core of veterans who probably would’ve been happy to never see Ishval again. They’re accompanied by a few Alchemists, on the Fuhrer’s orders. They’re dogs of the military, just like her, and the majority of them she recognizes, by name and reputation if not by sight. They greet her like old… war buddies. Not friends, exactly. But the war knit them pretty close, at least those assigned to the same region. And all she has to do is glance at them to confirm that none of them have any interest in re-igniting a war. 

But being back here in these sands makes the soldiers wary. Some of them are even obviously angry. And angry young men and women holding weapons - or _being_ weapons - at a contested border with a hated enemy could get ugly fast. Just one accidental bullet, fired in fear, sparked the last eight-year-long conflict. The tension nearly crushes Emma. It turns out that following orders, even sickening ones, was so much easier than giving them. 

“You fought in the last war?” she asks Avery, as they patrol.   
  
He shakes his head. “No, actually. I was in the South. Aurego.”  
  
“But the 23rd comes from East.”   
  
Avery shrugs. “I can handle the men, if that’s what you’re worried about.”  
  
“I’m not… worried, exactly. Just…”  
  
“I wasn’t there. Here. And you think that means I lack some crucial capacity for understanding.”  
  
“Do you? Think that, I mean.”  
  
Avery stops, crosses his arms in front of his chest, and looks at her. He lets his gaze slide meaningfully toward the rows of tents where the Ishvalan refugees huddle in subdued quiet, just trying to stay alive. “I think I understand just fine.”   
  
Emma scowls. In the months since the Flame Alchemist’s visit and the death of the boy that tried to kill him, whose name Emma still doesn’t know because of Ishvalan tradition, and the removal of Gloster from command, and her taking his place, and the attack… in all of that, the laughter and singing and children running underfoot that she had come to accept as signs of slow recovery have disappeared. It’s all been replaced by resentment and fear. The Ishvalans look at her with their blood-bright eyes and see an enemy (haven’t they always?) “These aren’t our people,” Avery points out. “Yet here we are, protecting them anyway.”  
  
Emma nods, because there is truth in that statement, but… but they’re ‘protecting’ until orders change, until another attack, from within or without, demands retaliation. She’d read Mustang’s report and agreed with every word. They are doing more damage the longer they stay here. The Ishvalans just want to be left alone. Could she abandon her post, flee into the deep desert, defect? It’s not like she wants to become Ishvalan, but more than one State Alchemist deserted the battlefield and did exactly what she is now considering. If she did, who would replace her? Avery? Or would High Command send a warmonger, someone who spouts “Amestris First” ideology with a smile on their face and blood on their hands? She sighs. She’s already half a traitor to her country. She wears the uniform. She’s _supposed_ to put Amestris first. And she has plenty of blood on her own hands.   
  
She watches Avery as he signals an all-clear to his man in the watchtower, and the soldiers at ground level pull open the gate to let them through. Their walk around the now-fortified barricade surrounding the camp turned up nothing. But the Ishvalans are smart enough not to come at them in the middle of the day. Whatever their next move is, Emma is almost certain it will come from whatever allies the hidden attackers out in the deep desert could cultivate here in the camps. If Amestris has female fighters willing to kill and die for their country, why wouldn't Ishval? But what is she supposed to do that she hasn't already done? The Ishvalan women and children can't leave the camps, the sundown curfew means they can't even leave their tents at night, the Amestrian soldiers hold full control over food and water rations, and can reduce or even totally withdraw them from any troublemakers. There are other punishments she's authorized to inflict, everything from confinement to hard labor to death, if the crime is severe enough.   
  
She hasn't personally lifted a finger to hurt anyone here, but that does not erase her culpability. She's trying to walk the incredibly fine line between protecting people (not just the Amestrian soldiers, but _all_ of the people here) and being so draconian that the Ishvalans stir up a resistance that she won't be able to keep in check. The Ishvalans are a proud people, and they clash against the Amestrians who are equally stubborn and convinced of their own superiority. Emma's here because she convinced _someone_ in High Command, or at least East HQ, that she could de-escalate a crisis before it turned into a threat. She hopes to hell they're right about that. But if she can't do it, probably no one can. There used to be Ishvalans in the Amestrian Military, but Order 3066 effectively erased them. And the Ishvalans regarded them as traitors to their own kind even in the early stages of the war. So Emma's as close to a neutral party as they're going to get. And she already knows what the Ishvalans want. The trick is somehow getting the Amestrian government to let them have it.   
  
She knows Mustang's probably working on the problem from his end, but any change involving politics will come slowly, if at all. She retreats into the command tent and sits down behind the folding table that serves as a desk. All the maps of the region are from the days before the war, and it's eerie seeing cities and towns laid out where there is nothing but wreckage now.   
  
For as long as she has been here, the Amestrian soldiers do not mingle with the Ishvalan civilians. There is a narrow no-man's-land between their two camps, a line that no one ever crosses. They'll have to cross it now, Emma thinks. She needs information that no Ishvalan will willingly give. “Post some soldiers in the camp,” she orders her second-in-command. “Let them circulate, keep an eye open for anyone who looks particularly restive.”  
  
The young man salutes, acknowledging her order, then spins on his heel to go and carry it out.   
  
Emma sits in the command tent for most of the night, praying to a god that she's not sure she believes in that the fragile peace she guards can somehow hold.

* * *

The hours until 2100 pass slowly. Armstrong spends most of those hours in the library, taking advantage of First Branch's considerable resources. He hasn't gotten to really look through all of the alchemical research texts in the towering stacks, at least not since he first became a State Alchemist, before the Ishval War. He pulls out books more out of curiosity than any real need to look up a specific topic. His research has mostly focused on transmuting different kinds of metal to maximize the power of the gauntlets he wears. He's messed with his array, more than once, figuring out exactly how to direct the energy created by his kinetic force to help him transmute stronger walls, or fix crumbling old buildings, or fight more effectively in order to defend and shield innocent people. If you can build something, you can break it, though. A wall can trap just as easily as it can protect. When the Fuhrer reinstated him, he _almost_ said no. But there was family honor to think about.   
  
Alex leaves the books he'd been reading on a cart so that they can be re-shelved, and he meets up with Hughes near a phone booth a couple blocks away from HQ. Hughes has exchanged his military uniform for a button down white shirt and brown slacks. He frowns at Armstrong, who didn't think to do something similar. “We can't be seen in anything that'll tie us to the military.”  
  
“But it's a military lab, isn't it?”  
  
“It's a _secret_ lab. It's supposed to be shut down. How fast can you find new clothes?”  
  
“I'll have to return to my house...”  
  
“I'll drive. Have you told anyone in the military that you're in town?”  
  
“No. Unless you count my father. We're not speaking, but...”  
  
“You think he'll say something?”  
  
Armstrong shakes his head. “No. He thinks I'm here on official business.”  
  
“Alright. I'll drive you home, get changed as quickly as you can, and meet me back at the car. I'll park down the street so that no one sees me in your driveway.”  
  
Armstrong nods his understanding and pushes open the door of the nondescript car that the Investigations office apparently keeps ready for situations just like this. As promised, Hughes has parked around a bend in the road where the car will be almost completely hidden by trees, a good distance from the Armstrong estate.   
  
Alex lets himself in to his childhood home and heads for his bedroom. As always, the house feels too big and too empty. Only little Catherine still lives here. For generations, the Armstrong children have tended toward throwing themselves into the wider world from the first second they are allowed to. Olivier never comes back to visit, Alex never wants to. But he wants to hang around Central HQ even less. So here he is.   
  
He rummages through his military-issue duffel bag and pulls on a sleeveless shirt and a hunting jacket with deep pockets that might come in handy. Then he pulls on some black pants. He keeps his gauntlets, tucked into the jacket pockets, for now. Their weight is heavy and comfortable.  
  
He's nearly to the door before his mother's voice calls out, “Alexander? Is that you?”   
  
He sighs, and turns back to the sound of the voice. It's coming from the dining room. Who knows what his mother is doing in there? It's certainly not dining. Alex remembers an entire childhood's worth of dinners where his mother did nothing but pick at her food.   
  
He walks over to the room, with its enormous dark wood furniture and crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. A room where everything looks pristine, lacking any kind of comfort or warmth. They ate in near-silence most nights. Olivier knew better than to speak unless spoken to in the presence of their father, and Alex, desperately wanting to win the general's affection, kept up a steady stream of exuberant chatter for most of his middle childhood, reveling in his accomplishments at school and his self-taught alchemy. But nothing he did was ever good enough. Eventually, he stopped trying.   
  
He settles into his old seat at the table, and though his broad-shouldered, well-muscled, adult body actually fits on the chair comfortably, he still feels like the nervous little boy who swung his legs back and forth under the table and held his breath through most of his meals, suffocated by the silence.   
  
“Are you well?” his mother asks him.  
  
Alex shrugs. His mother feigned blindness and deafness enough when he was growing up that he's not sure she has the right to inquire about his wellness now. And after the debacle in Ishval, she did nothing to help when Alex rebelled not just against the Amestrian military, but against his father personally, accusing him of condoning genocide. He was so horrified by what he'd seen and been forced to do that there wasn't any room left for childhood fears. So what if his father hated him? That wasn't new.   
  
It hurt more when Liv retreated to her mountain fortress and stopped talking to him, but he could read her better than she thought, and he understood that the disgust she aimed at him was a reflection of her own uncertainties about the ingrained truths that they had both been taught. The military she served wasn't righteous or good, and she knew it. But without it, what else was there?  
  
Alex looks down at his civilian clothes, no pocketwatch or rank insignia or even the familiar blue color that ties him to the military. _But without it, what else is there?_ He knows the only way to scrape a living as an alchemist is to do it with official sanction, as a dog of the military. As a State Alchemist, he's technically still a major. But for practical purposes, he's usually treated like a private, if that: unable to give orders, not trusted enough to command anyone, and forced to take whatever abuse the senior staff wants to dish out. General Grumman is reasonable enough that Alex can work for him, out in East, but back here in Central people still see him as a deserter and they treat him accordingly.   
  
He keeps to himself these days, doing research and using his alchemy to help civilians here and there. And babysitting Edward Elric is already much more stressful than Mustang indicated. And now that they're no longer at war, he has to worry about annual recertification, which in his case is more dependent on the Fuhrer's mood than on any work he produces. He's completely aware that he's being carefully watched, that his ability to follow orders _is_ the test, much more than his skill as an alchemist.

“It's nice to have you at home again,” his mother says.

Alex sighs. “It's only for a few days, Mama.”

She doesn't respond to that. The silence between them is strained. And Maes Hughes is still waiting for Alex in his car a few blocks away. He's probably getting impatient. Or he's about to charge in here, thinking that something's gone wrong.

Alex pushes back from the table and gets up, feeling his mother's gaze tracking his movement as he strides over to the open doorway leading into the hall, and the overwhelmingly ostentatious marble staircase, and the front door. But just before he leaves the room, he turns back to his mother and smiles sheepishly as he says “I love you.” She relaxes as he says it, saying a lot of things without actually saying anything. Alex knows that in her eyes he will perpetually be five years old, and he gives her that. Things were simpler when he _was_ five years old, and his mother didn't yet have to feel like her entire life was a loyalty test, with her husband on one side and her children on another.

He walks out of the room, and shakes his head as if that could somehow simplify things. Honor, Duty, Strength. The Armstrong family has been fighting for generations, maybe since Amestris' very first war. Alex can't tear himself away from that completely. He doesn't _want_ to. So where the hell does that leave him?

“Y'okay?” Hughes asks, as Alex slides into the passenger seat of the car.

“Yeah, just... family. You know?”

“I haven't spoken to my old man since the Academy,” Hughes says, as he eases the car into the empty street and starts driving. The headlights pierce the darkness of the night. Armstrong glances at the other man. Maes may have spoken casually, as though his words were nothing more than an offhand comment. But Alex sighs heavily and silently commiserates with his fellow soldier. Hughes has an infant daughter, doesn't he? Alex can't imagine ever being a father. It seems like far too heavy a responsibility.

“You find anything in that Alchemists' library?” Hughes asks, as he navigates the city streets.

Armstrong shakes his head. “There's nothing. Not in the First Branch, not in the East Lab... There's no record of the Philosopher's Stone _anywhere_ , I've looked.”

Hughes frowns. “But... you used them in the war. That has to be documented somewhere, doesn't it?” Armstong shrugs. “And this Marcoh guy,” Hughes continues. “He must have some kind of notes.”  
  
“None that he'd be stupid enough to let the military get hold of.”  
  
Maes grunts an acknowledgement, then turns right, crossing the train tracks that serve as the dividing line between the military-dominated center of the city and the slums and poor neighborhoods that crowd the southern part of the city. He drives through the narrower streets and dims the beams of his headlights. The last thing he and Armstrong want is to draw attention. They pass the prison, (not the one near HQ where traitors and war criminals are kept, just a normal prison, for murderers and thieves), whose shadow looms large over this section of the city. Maes feels bad for the kids growing up here, their eyes always drawn to that on their horizon. Kids like Roy Mustang, who found a better life in the military, and in alchemy.   
  
Maes glances at Armstrong, who looks deep in his own thoughts, and then he pulls to a stop in an empty lot near where he'd drawn the x on the map to mark the Fifth Lab. He and Armstrong get out of the car and look around.   
  
“There,” Hughes finally says, pointing to a warehouse that looks long-abandoned, on the opposite end of the lot.   
  
Armstrong nods agreement.   
  
They turn off their lights and head toward the building. “It'll be locked,” Hughes says, pitching his voice low so as not to be overheard. “But I figure that won't be a problem for an alchemist.” Armstrong actually smiled at that, and Hughes wondered if he'd used his alchemical talents in the same way Mustang had at the Academy.   
  
They decide to sneak through the northern entrance, which is farthest away from the searchlights of the prison. Maes steps back while Armstrong creates a door where there wasn't one before, and pushes it in to reveal a room that looks exactly like one would expect to find in a science lab: there are vials full of substances that look suspiciously like blood, and others filled with liquid a brighter red. There are papers scattered all over the tables and the floor. Maes picks one up, he immediately recognizes the transmutation circle. He hands it to Armstong. “What does it do?”  
  
Armstrong turns away from where he'd been sealing their entrance behind them. He takes the paper. Itdoesn't look like anything he's ever seen before. He shakes his head and hands it back to Hughes, who stares at it for a few seconds longer before shoving it into his pocket. “Come on,” Hughes says. “Let's go.”

He tries to analyze the circle as they walk. It nags at him that the thing has five points, just like their map of the city. A pentagon circumscribed within a circle. There are other symbols besides, the language of alchemy, but not anything Armstrong recognizes. That means it's not the kind of thing that would be taught, or turn up in the State Alchemist Exam.   
  
The hallways are dim and empty, and they pass plenty of closed doors, but Hughes is looking for something obvious. He gets it in the sound of screaming. “Come on,” he hisses, pulling Armstrong's hand. They rush toward the source of the sound, deeper into the building. And they stop short at the entrance of a wide open chamber directly in the center of the warehouse.  
  
The scene inside is horrifying. The same transmutation circle that's scribbled on the paper still in Maes's hand has been painted on the floor, large scale. The paint has clearly been there for a while, it looks like years. And standing in the middle of the circle is a man in prison garb, his wrists handcuffed in front of him. He is whimpering, pleading, but the military officers holding watch over... whatever this is, offer no sympathy for the man.   
  
Maes watches those officers. One of them has to be an alchemist. A short, round man steps out just enough that he can touch the circle, and the familiar light of an alchemic reaction taking place temporarily blinds Hughes. But the light isn't blue. It's red.   
  
When Hughes opens his eyes again, the prisoner is nowhere to be seen. The alchemist is smiling, while the other officers glance at one another but say nothing.   
  
“That reaction,” Hughes whispers to Armstrong. “What did it do?”  
  
Armstrong nods toward the alchemist, who holds a bright red jewel in his hand. It catches the light and refracts through the concrete room. “They're making Philosopher's Stones.”  
  
Hughes swallows hard, then pulls on Armstrong's arm to lead him back into the hall so they won't be overheard. “They're making Philosopher's Stones,” he repeats dully, once he and Armstrong are sheltered in a darkened corner. Armstrong nods. “They're making Philosopher's Stones by killing people.” His gut twists, but Maes has seen a lot of terrible things in his military career. “Come on,” he says to Armstrong. “I think I hear something.”   
  
Incongruously, what he hears is laughter. It's a crazed kind of laughter that sets his teeth on edge, but he follows the source of the sound. The door he sees next, the one that would lead into the room next to the large open space they've just left, is ajar. Maes frowns. Every other door they've seen in this place has been locked. But he takes a deep breath and pushes the door open wide enough that he can step through.   
  
What he sees is a collection of prisoners, kept in a large cage. Most of them are cowering as far away from the nearby room with its transmutation circle as they can, but, in the center of the cage, sitting cross-legged on the floor, is Major Zolf Kimblee. Well, Hughes supposes he's not a Major anymore. He'd been stripped of rank and dishonorably discharged on the way to his life sentence in this prison. Roy, who had attended the trial, had filled Maes in on the details.   
  
Kimblee looks up as soon as Hughes steps into the room, and smiles a brilliant smile. His eyes meet Hughes's (and he waves his arm, taking in the space all around him.)  
  
“This is hilarious,” Kimblee insists. “All these people killing each other for power.” He holds out his hands, which are still locked tightly into their wooden cage, but the light reflects on the sun and moon designs tattooed on his palms.   
  
Hughes had sat around a campfire once, listening as Major Kimblee extolled the virtues of genocide. He wonders if Kimblee remembers that. He narrows his eyes. “Aren't you afraid they're going to kill you?”  
  
Kimblee laughs again. Hughes looks over his shoulder to where Major Armstrong stands. The Major has his arms over his chest and is glaring at Kimblee. It would have been frightening if Hughes wasn't on his side. But Kimblee seems to be ignoring Armstrong. Not that Hughes is very surprised by that. Kimblee likes people with power, and Armstrong's breakdown on the battlefield and subsequent discharge hardly fit the common definition of heroic.   
  
The rest of the prisoners have begun calling out to Hughes and Armstrong. “Please,” they cry. “You have to save us!”  
  
Hughes sighs. He hardly feels like letting some of Central's worst criminals run free, but he can't let them be killed to fuel some unknown alchemical reaction either. He glances at Armstrong once again, and, off the Major's nod, exhales loudly and nodded. “Alright,” he says.“Go big or go home.”  
  
He pulls his military-issued pocketknife out of his pocket and uses it to jimmy the lock on the cage. And that, of course, is the moment two of the guards walked back into the room. Hughes curses internally, but finishes his work. He barely gets out of the way before the prisoners run over him in their stampede to get out and be free. The only person who doesn't move is, of course, Kimblee. He's still grinning, and the guards give him a wide berth. In fact, they seem to be ignoring the mundane prisoners, focusing instead on the two alchemists: Kimblee and Armstrong. Hughes is a secondary concern.   
  
The important thing is that Hughes has drawn his gun, and so have the two guards. Armstrong claps his hands together, and, with his alchemical bracers pressed to the floor, he creates a wave in the floor that staggeres the two guards, sending their gunshots off harmlessly, lodging into the ceiling and walls. Most of the prisoners stagger as well, some even fell to the ground.   
  
Hughes keeps his gun in his hand, but he takes the few steps over to the cage, and grabs Kimblee's upper arm. “Come on,” he says. “It's time to go.”  
  
Kimblee struggles to his feet, and follows Hughes's lead only reluctantly. He waves his hands, asking without words if Hughes would undo the cuffs the same way he'd opened the lock on the cage. Hughes shakes his head and doesn't bother to hide his look of disbelief. “Like hell I'm going to let you blow up this place while I'm standing in it.” Kimblee chuckles to himself. Hughes doesn't have time to feel disgusted – one of the guards is pointing his gun at him again. Hughes keeps Kimblee in between the guard and himself as a shield – cowardly, but practical. Kimblee hums something that might have been a note of approval.   
  
Armstrong creates a box of four concrete walls to trap the two guards, who are still shooting their guns uselessly against the surface.   
  
Maes took another look around the room, torn between wanting to round up the prisoners and wanting to get out of here himself. And then, the room explodes with a burst of light.


	18. Chapter 18

Maeswakes up with a pounding headache. He blinks bleary eyes and wonders why his whole body hurts. Then his elbow bumps up against the chunk of concrete supporting it, and it all comes rushing back. Hughes hurries to his feet, slightly dizzy, and looks around for Armstrong. Or Kimblee. Really, he'd settle for any other living person.   
  
Theexplosion has taken out a large chunk of the building, including the wall that had once separated the prisoners from the transmutation circle where their lives would be used as sacrifice. The red paint? - Maes hopes it's paint – that makes up the circle is shockingly bright. The circle has been broken by rubble and debris, and the ground itself is canted as if by one of Armstrong's earthquakes.   
  
Maes slowly gets to his feet. He sees Armstrong frantically waving his beefy arm. Hughes picks his way through the rubble and joins him.   
  
“Do you think we've got enough evidence now?” Armstrong asks. He's clearly hopeful, but Maes shakes his head.   
  
“There's nothing tangible. Just hearsay. And Kimblee's blown up most of what we could use, anyway.”  
  
Armstrong frowns, and then he says, “I don't think the explosion came from Kimblee.”   
  
Maes opens his mouth to ask a question, but shuts it again as Armstrong nods toward a small crater in the ground, where the Crimson Alchemist is pinned under a slab of concrete, his body still and bloody. He runs over to the man, though he cannot decide why he cares for Kimblee one way or another. He drops to his knees and presses his fingers to Kimblee's neck, feeling for a pulse. “He's still alive,” he announces, and Armstrong immediately begins lifting large chunks of rubble away from the unconscious alchemist. His hands are still locked into the wooden boards that keep them separated. So Armstrong is right: the explosion did not come from him.   
  
So where the hell did it come from, then? It's yet one more question they'll need to hunt for the answer to.   
  
Armstrong had been sickened ever since finding out the truth of how the Philosopher's Stones were created from Tim Marcoh. His certainty that someone in the upper echelons of the Amestrian government is pulling the strings grows ever more solid, now.   
  
He looks to Maes, helpless, uncertain how to salvage their investigation from a setback this large.   
  
Maes just shrugs, and watches Kimblee with a critical eye. The man is beginning to stir, and he cries out as Armstrong removes the last large boulder from his crushed legs. Hughes frowns down at the injury. “He won't be walking out of here.”  
  
“I'll carry him,” Armstrong offers.   
  
“Like hell, you will,” Kimblee groans. Armstrong ignores his objections. Kimblee screams again as Armstrong picks him up, as gently as he is able. The Crimson Alchemist looks pleadingly at Maes.   
  
“We'll get you to a hospital,” Hughes promises, although Kimblee is supposed to be in _jail_ , and he's a witness to everything that just happened in the government's secret death lab. He likely won't be safe in a hospital. The look on his face makes it clear that he knows that, too. “I'll figure something out,” Hughes ammends, hoping he sounds more confident than he feels.   
  
Kimblee passes out again sometime during the uncertain walk through the wreckage of the lab to Hughes's car, which sits on the street looking as if nothing at all has happened. Armstrong lays Kimblee down in the back seat of the car and then wrestles himself into the front.   
  
Hughes drives in silence, near aimlessly. They certainly can't go back to headquarters, and he doesn't feel comfortable bringing the Crimson Alchemist into his home; besides which, he couldn't provide the medical attention that Kimblee needs. Hughes has no great love for the man, but he doesn't really want him to die. Kimblee had once saved Roy's life in Ishval. Hughes figures he probably still owes him for that.   
  
Armstrong shoots a questioning look in Hughes's direction as he turns the corner onto a narrow street. His headlights carve through the darkness, coming to rest on a small house set in a row of them. A quiet neighborhood on the south side of the city. Hughes can remember picking Mustang up from this house, very drunk, a few times in the immediate aftermath of the war, what feels like a lifetime ago.   
  
“Leave him in the car,” Hughes says quietly to Armstrong. The Strong Arm Alchemist nods, and stays put in the passenger street, to keep an eye on their unconscious and yet still very dangerous compatriot.   
  
Hughes knocks on the brightly painted door and waits for the grizzled old man to pull open the door. Dr. Knox raises an eyebrow, looking Hughes up and down. He grunts, which may be something like an acknowledgement of Hughes's presence, or possibly even a greeting.   
  
“I need your help,” Maes says levelly. “We need a doctor who can keep his mouth shut.”  
  
Knox nods his understanding, and Maes gestures toward Armstrong in the passenger seat of the car, waving him toward Knox's home. Armstrong gets out of the car, then tries to carefully move Kimblee, who whimpers as Alex jostles him.   
  
Knox takes one look at the Crimson Alchemist and shoots another look at Maes.   
  
“There was an explosion,” Hughes says, which explains everything and nothing.   
  
Knox has Armstrong lay Kimblee down on a bed in a small bedroom just to the right of his home's main entryway. The doctor then carefully studies the patient for several long minutes. “He may not walk again,” he finally announces.  
  
Hughes looks troubled, but says nothing. Knox sits on the bed next to Kimblee and smoothly removes his restraints. The arrays on the palms of his hands stand in sharp contrast to his pale skin. Hughes watches as Knox sets up an IV, dripping morphine into Kimblee's blood. The Crimson Alchemist is barely conscious. He doesn't react to the doctor's ministrations. Hughes, who saw plenty of soldiers die in Ishval, is deeply unsettled by the whole situation.   
  
“Get out,” Knox orders, practically shoving Hughes and Armstrong out the door of the little room. “I'll call you if there's any news,” he says, just before slamming the door in their faces.   
  
Alex looks at Maes. “Whoever was in charge of that lab will try to erase the evidence,” the investigator murmurs. “Might be safer for you to go back east for a while.”   
  
Alex shakes his head. “They already tried to blow me up to conceal evidence. I'm not going to let them get away with it.”  
  
Hughes nods, and runs a hand through his hair. “I'm heading back to the office,” he decides. It's where he does his best thinking, anyway. He might have enough pieces to at least get a start on putting together this puzzle. Maybe Armstrong can help him with the alchemical side of things. This Philosopher's Stone business. Hughes has barely heard of the things. But he knew that Roy had had one during the war. He saw it once, glinting red in Mustang's pocket as Hughes stripped him out of his clothes in the heat of the desert.   
  
Hughes opens and closes an empty fist, and then returns to his car. “We'll need to follow the money,” he says, as he drives smoothly through the nearly empty streets. Most people are tucked away inside their homes at this hour, asleep. “Plots like this, there's always a money trail.”  
  
Armstrong nods, though aside from the salaries of the State Alchemists involved, he's not sure what money has to do with the creation of the Philosopher's Stones. He follows Hughes into the Investigations department and parks himself in a chair at the other man's urging. While Armstrong sits still, occasionally stifling a yawn, Maes Hughes is a blur of motion. He pulls files down from shelves and out of cabinets, and scans through them, sorting them into piles according to some system he doesn't share with Alex.   
  
Hours that feel like days pass in near-silence, until, outside, the sky begins to lighten. Armstrong looks once more at the piece of paper upon which Hughes has sketched the transmutation circle that had been carefully drawn on the floor of the 5th lab. There, nothing remains but rubble, but perhaps they can glean some information from what they'd seen even so.   
  
Hughes tilts his head back, looking at the map of Central City tacked to the wall. His eyes find the prison they'd just visited, the 5th laboratory that completes a circle. He pulls the map down and grabs a pencil, circling each of the five alchemical laboratories in the city, drawing lines between each of them. When he shows Armstrong the map, the other man visibly pales.   
  
“It looks like...” he begins, and Maes nods. It looks like a transmutation circle, like _the_ transmutation circle they'd seen lit up red as it stole the life force from helpless prisoners in the name of creation. Experiments like this are why most people are afraid of alchemists.   
  
Maes settles back in his chair, suddenly exhausted. His eyes flick over to Armstrong, questioning, and yes, a little bit afraid. “What does this mean?” he asks, his voice small.  
  
Armstrong looks just as unsettled as he does. He doesn't want to voice the answer that he is so afraid is true. “We need to keep searching,” he says instead. “We need to find out how high up this goes.”  
  
Hughes nods, but his stomach constricts with the full awareness that something this big must have been set into place a long time ago, near to the foundation of the city, and the nation. Something like this could not have happened without the complicity of those at the very top. “Your family's been part of the military since the beginning, right?” he asks Armstrong. “Do they have records? Old newspapers or anything like that?”  
  
Armstrong shrugs. “Perhaps I can get my father to tell me a few old war stories,” he suggests.   
  
“Do that,” Hughes orders. “I'll find out what I can from here.”

* * *

“Sir?” Riza says, quiet but insistent. Roy looks up. “Did you ever read those reports from Liore?”  
  
“What? Yeah. ‘Course I did.”  
  
He _did_ , but from the look she’s giving him, apparently not well enough.   
  
“This Father Cornello is apparently stirring up riots. There’s been some sort of… religious schism.”  
  
Roy sighs heavily. Organized religion isn’t widespread or popular in Amestris, but where it takes root, it does so with a vengeance. And it’s only a headache for him when it does. He frowns. “Wait… this is the same Father Cornello that Fullmetal reported was-”  
  
“‘Dying, or wishing that he was,’ I think were his exact words. Yes.”  
  
“We’ve got confirmed intelligence?”  
  
“Not confirmed enough. Thus, the need for a task force.”  
  
“A task force.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“What does that mean? Me and you?”  
  
“And Edward Elric. He was the one to make the initial report.”  
  
There are at least a thousand things Roy Mustang would rather do than go chasing after a possibly reincarnated cult leader who may or may not be in possession of a Philosopher’s Stone. But he is an officer of the Amestrian Military, and “I don’t want to” has never been an acceptable response to a lawfully given order. And this is his _job_.   
  
“Is this Cornello guy still using alchemy?”  
  
“Surprisingly… no.”  
  
Roy raises an eyebrow. So the part about the Philosopher’s Stone being destroyed was probably true, then. “Is that the reason for the schism? No more miracles?”  
  
“There is a faction claiming that the high priest is an impostor.”  
  
“Brilliant,” Roy mutters.   
  
But he gathers his team. It is an intelligence gathering operation, after all, and if they’re trying to quell the localized violence before it spreads, he doesn’t want to walk in with a full battalion of armed military. The Eastern Region is jumpy enough. And from what Edward’s report said, this Cornello guy’s got the townsfolk thinking alchemy’s nearly as blasphemous in Liore as it is in Ishval. If Roy makes the wrong move, those people will see him as a barely-leashed attack dog instead of a peacekeeper. They’ll probably see him that way anyway. And Fullmetal attacked and may have killed their priest, if in fact this new leader _is_ an imposter. Either way, they’re not likely to be happy to see him.   
  
“Are we sure bringing Elric into this is a good idea?” he asks Riza quietly.  
  
“He knows the lay of the land better than we do, sir.”   
  
“You’ll keep him protected?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“If you have to pick him or me, I want you covering him.” Her eyes widen and she’s about to shake her head, Roy can see it, but she just holds his gaze and then nods. Edward Elric is twelve years old, and Roy feels responsible for him. And if Roy is responsible for him, then so is she. “Thank you, Riza,” Roy breathes.   
  
She gives another nod, of acknowledgment this time, and then climbs up into the back of a military truck, right behind him. Havoc’s already perched atop one of the wheel wells, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He gives a nod of acknowledgment, which Roy returns while Riza looks out of the truck's open back, scanning for threats. They're still in the parking lot of East HQ, though, so Roy has no idea what she thinks she'll see. A moment later, Sergeant Fuery scrambles onto the truck, dragging a case full of communications and radio equipment up with him. That might come in handy for listening in on the situation, once they get where they're going.   
  
Breda drives, while Ed Elric rides shotgun. Al has to stay behind, his armored body being far too conspicuous and memorable for a covert mission. Ed had pitched the predictable fit, refusing to leave East City without his brother until Roy was forced to make it an order, making it clear that _his_ orders come from higher up in the chain. For several minutes, he was afraid the boy would push it anyway, but Ed seemed to understand. The resentment was clear in his eyes, but he let Roy call him a dog of the military on the day he earned his watch. He can’t act surprised now.

Roy watches him sulk in the passenger seat at the front of the truck, hoping to hell this doesn’t turn into the shitstorm he fears it will.

The drive to Liore will take most of the day, and it's uncomfortable in the back of a troop transport. But the army has never cared much for their comfort. Havoc slides down from the wheel well and leans against the side of the truck, trying to tease Hawkeye the same way he has since they were in the academy together. Riza hadn't responded then and she doesn't respond now. Havoc looks to Colonel Mustang for help, but Roy just shrugs. He knows a little bit more about Riza than Havoc does, but that doesn't change the fact that she's been taking care of herself for so long that she doesn't really trust anyone else. If Roy Mustang is the one exception, it's not likely that influence extends past him to Lieutenant Havoc.

Jean heaves a miserable sigh and lays down in the middle of the truck bed, putting his arm behind his head to cradle it. Roy pretends he isn't there, having learned from long experience that Jean Havoc will stop his dramatics much more quickly if ignored. Fuery keeps quiet, and then bursts into the non-existent conversation suddenly to ask if anyone wants him to find a radio station to relieve the unbearable awkwardness of this ride. Mustang is torn between pointing out that that's not what military equipment is for and agreeing immediately. “Can you do that?” he finally asks the young sergeant.   
  
“Sure,” Fuery says, and after several minutes of playing with his wireless and more antennas than Roy thinks he's ever seen, he demonstrates that ability, tuning into an East City classical station that Roy appreciates, and Kain Fuery surprises him by listening with obvious enthusiasm. Riza gives Roy a shy smile that communicates 'remember when we used to listen to this stuff when we were kids?' He smiles back, until Havoc rolls his eyes. Fuery studiously pretends to be oblivious to the scene playing out in front of him. He holds a pair of headphones in his hand but doesn't put them on.   
  
They ride across the dry landscape, the road borderd by stretches of yellowing grass. Occasionally they'll see animals hemmed in by fences: sheep, cows, chickens. These only pop up when they're near a village, though. And in the villages, their military truck is looked at with deep suspicion and sometimes outright jeers. Mustang prefers the quiet of the open road.   
  
He looks at Ed, who has spent far more time on the ground in the Eastern Region than he has recently. But Ed is inside of the truck, talking back and forth with Breda, so Roy keeps his questions to himself.   
The heat of noon beats down on the crowded truck, causing Havoc to strip off his military jacket and Fuery to continuously stop fiddling with his radio equipment to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Mustang feels the heat, of course, but it's nowhere close to Ishval's climate. He'll survive.   
  
Liore appears on the horizon as the sun is just beginning to set. Breda speeds up a little, eating the remaining miles until they crest the small hill that protects the town. He pulls the jeep to a stop next to a fountain at the edge of the city.  
  
“I remember this place,” Ed announces as he jumps down from the seat of the truck. He begins tromping through the loose sand that encroaches on the road and dominates the desert town. Breda shoots a questioning glance at Colonel Mustang, then shrugs and follows Ed. The two of them wind up at a food stand, with the rest of the team close behind. Ed hides in Breda's shadow, knowing that if the proprieter recognizes him, their entire mission could be blown.   
  
“I'm going to do recon,” he says to Breda. It's military jargon that feels wrong in his mouth, but Breda just nods.   
  
“Take Fuery with you.”  
  
Ed pulls on Fuery's hand, and the two of them begin walking up the main road toward the church that looms high above everything else in the skyline.

“Ed, wait!” Fuery calls.  
  
And then everything goes black.

* * *

Ed has his arms tightly tied behind his back, and the guards aren't bothering to be gentle.  
  
“Father,” they intone. “We have found the blasphemer.”  
  
Father Cornello walks slowly across the stone floor tiles toward Ed. His boots click with every step he takes. “Bold of you to come here, boy.”  
  
And then he reaches out and slaps Ed hard across the face. Ed spits out spittle and blood, and he growls at his captor. He struggles to get free, but the guards hold his upper arms tightly, so that he can barely move.  
  
Ed tracks Cornello's movement with his eyes, as he chews on his lower lip and slips into his calm, rational scientist self. “You’re looking good for someone I left half-dead six months ago.” Cornello grins, wide and hungry. It’s fucking disturbing. Ed glares. “Who are you?” he demands.  
  
Cornello smirks, and it doesn't look like any expression that should belong on the face of a kindly old priest. “Wouldn't you like to know?” the man taunts.   
  
“You don't even havea Philosopher's Stone. You can't do miracles anymore. You're a nobody.”  
  
“I'll show you how much of a nobody I am.”  
  
Cornello whistles, as if calling a dog, and men and women start streaming into the room. They are lean and muscular, armed, and Ed has seen enough soldiers to recognize the type.  
  
He is horribly outnumbered, and he knows it. He twists and wriggles in an attempt to escape his bonds, but they hold fast, and Ed nearly screams in frustration.   
  
Suddenly, through a gap in the guards, Ed sees a familiar figure. The light glints off Fuery's glasses, and Ed clenches his teeth and growls a wordless encouragement for the young radio tech to hurry. Fuery has a gun – Ed can see it in his hand – but it still startles the teenage alchemist when the loud pops of gunfire ring out through the still air.   
  
Cornello's head snaps toward the source of the sound, and his face grows red with anger.   
  
“Fuery, help me!” Ed calls, still trying to wriggle his way out of his bonds. Kain's gun knocks down another one of the guards, and he runs through the open space the dropped body creates, hurrying toward Ed. He trades his gun for the field knife strapped to his belt, and sets to work attempting to cut through the thick ropes holding Ed's wrists tied behind his back.   
  
Of course, Cornello and the other guards don't exactly stand around and wait while he does this. The closest soldier grabs Fuery's shoulder, attempting to twist him around and get him away from Ed. Fuery elbows him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He's grateful that none of Cornello's men seem to be armed – the priest seems to believe that he can quell any resistance through force of numbers alone.

His knife cuts through the last of the rope.   
  
The heavy coil drops to the floor, and Ed grins maniacally. He claps his hands to weaken the ceiling and walls, sending them crashing down. He jumps up before the landslide hits him, grabbing onto an iron light fixture for support. His grip is perilous and the section of wall the fixture is attached to is tilted and in danger of falling. Still he's light enough – small enough, dammit – to scramble up onto a relatively flat chunk of stone that allows him to get his balance.  
  
He looks around for Cornello, or any of the soldiers, but they seem to have gone down hard. He can't see Fuery anywhere, either, and he winces as his heart pounds with the fear that he might have hurt one of Mustang's team.   
  
And then, the ground erupts as a monster tears its way through it. The monster looks likea green, multi-legged slug. Its entire body is covered in eyes, each blinking and rolling around. The monster sniffs, obviously attempting to track its prey by smell.   
  
“ _What_ are you?” Ed asks, revising his earlier question. The monster lets out a disturbingly human-sounding laugh, high and cold. Ed shivers. The monster stalks toward him with heavy footsteps and snarling jaws. It opens its huge, slobbery mouth, wide enough to swallow Ed whole, but Ed claps his hands and transforms his automail arm into a sharply pointed blade. He is not going down without a fight.   
  
When the monster attempts to chomp its teeth down around Ed's small and fragile body, the alchemist stabs upward, piercing the thing right in the roof of its mouth and sending blood raining down. The monster howls in pain and frustration and rage, the sound shaking the entire room.   
  
The sound of Fuery's gunshots ring through the echo, peppering the monster all along the side of its body. From what Ed can tell, the bullets don't harm the creature at all. Ed rolls out of the way of another of the monster's attempts to bite him, and he shoots Fuery a look. The sergeant just shrugs, leveling his gun at the few of Cornello's men that are attempting to struggle to their feet, knowing that a bullet will be far more effective against human man than against whatever this... thing is.   
  
Ed stabs at the creature again, aiming for its hopefully sensitive underbelly. The monster lets out another growl of frustration, and then... its whole body seems to ripple, right before Ed's eyes. It shrinks and morphs, and as Ed stands there utterly baffled, it turns into something like a human, with spiky green hair, sparkling eyes, and a cruel smile.   
  
“What are you?” Ed asks again. The creature laughs. It morphs back into Cornello's shape as Ed watches.   
  
“Why, I am just a simple priest, young man.” He practically cackles.   
  
Ed begins running toward him, blade drawn. The monster draws a gun from who-the-hell-knows-where and fires it at Ed. The bullet clips his shoulder, sending him spinning. The pain flares like a bright star and Ed almost can't right himself, until he hears Fuery calling his name.   
  
The sergeant and not-Cornello trade gunfire. It provides enough distraction for Ed to slip in behind the priest-imposter and punch through his back with his alchemically-created blade. He pulls the transformed automail out smoothly, pleased by the amount of red blood gushing from the wound. But Cornello whirls around with inhuman speed, a smile still plastered on his face.   
  
Ed swallows hard, aware of how utterly unmatched he is.   
  
One of Fuery's bullets catches the monster between the eyes. As he falls, the young sergeant grabs Ed's hand, and runs.   
  
The twisting pathways of the church form a deadly labyrinth, and every time they turn a corner, Fuery is sure they'll be running into an ambush. But the place is unnervingly quiet, as if Cornello's entire summoned army is trapped within the walls they've left behind.   
  
Fuery lets Ed's hand slip out of his, and the two of them round a corner, panting for breath. Bright sunlight pours into the little hallway, shining in from the door at the end. Ed can't get out of this place quick enough, and Fuery is right on his heels. The sergeant looks around once they get out into a picturesque little courtyard, rife with shade trees and colorful flowers, despite the fact that Liore is in the middle of the desert.   
  
He grabs for the radio hooked up to his belt, and hands it to Ed wordlessly. The alchemist fumbles with the dial for a moment, and then holds the speaker up to his mouth.   
  
“Mustang?” Ed calls over the radio. “I found out the truth about Cornello. The people are right. He is a fraud.” He carefully doesn't announce how much damage had been incurred while he'd been finding out that information. Mustang sighs heavily anyway.   
  
“Get back here,” he orders. Ed shoots a sideways glance at Fuery, who shrugs.  
  
“Okay,” Ed agrees.

* * *

“He's not even human,” Ed says, huddled next to the campfire under the starlit night sky.   
  
Roy quirks an eyebrow. What is _that_ supposed to mean? 

He listens to Ed recount his fight with the thing Cornello had turned into, and he has to admit, it all sounds like bullshit to him. But Ed doesn't usually lie, especially not about things this important. So something that sounds completely impossible isn't. It gnaws at Mustang's scientist mind: he has to figure it out.   
  
“So we're dealing with something that can take on the shape of another person?”  
  
“That's what I _said_. Haven't you been listening?”  
  
“Yeah,” Mustang says quietly. “Yeah, I've been listening. He taps his fingers against the side of his leg. “We'll have to draw it out,” he muses. “Force it to reveal itself to the people. That'll turn them against him.”  
  
Ed looks straight at him, bright-eyed, a cocky grin on his face. Mustang sighs.  
  
“I'm guessing from the look on your face that you've got an idea.”


	19. Chapter 19

The plan, Fuery understands, has two phases. He needs to eavesdrop and he needs to broadcast what he hears. It shouldn't be difficult, as Liore is already covered with radio speakers, through which Father Cornello can make announcements to his faithful. The trickiest part will be setting him up to speak in front of his own microphone.   
  
“We need to hide it in the one place we can guarantee he won't look,” Ed insists.  
  
“Yeah? And where's that?”  
  
Rather than explain it to Fuery, Ed just takes the thumbnail sized microphone and holds in loosely in the palm of his hand. “Just let me handle it.”   
  
Fuery shoots a questioning glance at Lieutenant Colonel Mustang, but the Flame Alchemist just shrugs. Apparently he trusts Ed at least this much. And he has been on solo missions, but still, he's only twelve years old, and Fuery feels an instinct to protect him.   
  
“I can handle myself,” Ed announces, as if reading Kain's thoughts.  
  
Fuery nods and gives the young Fullmetal Alchemist a smile that is supposed to be reassuring. “Just keep in touch,” he orders, and Ed agrees.   
  
Breda and Havoc had tried to teach Ed a little bit of basic spycraft, at least enough to reconnoiter a building. Being stealthy takes finesse, something Ed doesn't usually bother with. Usually, he's traveling with his brother, after all, and Al's huge metal body is not made for blending quietly into the shadows. Ed doesn't like sneaking and hiding, but after the army's worth of people the fake Cornello had just thrown at him, he isn't sure he can survive another attempt at swaggering in through the front door. If he does this right, the priest-imposter won't know he's there at all.   
  
He steers clear of the main room where his recent fight had taken place. Instead, he skirts along the outside of the building, remaining low to the ground and peeking into the windows every now and then. Most of what he sees are dormitory rooms like the one he, Al, and Major Armstrong had stayed in on their first visit to Liore. Most of the rooms are empty. Eventually, when he's nearly circled around to where he started, Ed spots what he'd been looking for, a small room like an office, with a large radio sitting on the desk.   
  
He jimmies open the lock on the window and pushes it up so that he can half climb and half tumble inside. He lands softly on a thick rug, and smiles to himself as he looks around. There are a couple of sets of priestly robes hanging from a coat stand in the corner, and a messy stack of papers on the desk next to the radio. But there's no one here, and when Ed listens, he can't hear anyone in the hall outside either.   
  
He takes a breath and hides Fuery's equipment, the bug and the microphone, within the radio itself, so that the next time the fake Cornello speaks in this room – whether he's intending to be overheard or not – the words will be relayed to Mustang's team, and, if necessary, the entire town.   
  
Ed, Fuery, and the rest of Mustang's team take turns monitoring the radio from the back of their truck, listening for anything they can use.

* * * *

“Father runs short of patience.”  
  
Envy lets their eyes flicker up to meet Lust's smoldering gaze, and they nod. “I don't know what he wants me to do,” they pout. “This city is on the edge of tearing itself apart.”  
  
“He wants you to push it over the edge,” Lust says testily. “I'm here to help if you can't manage it on your own.”  
  
“I don't need your help.”   
  
“That remains to be seen, doesn't it?”  
  
“Who is that?” Ed asks, leaning closer to Fuery's radio as if that might help him answer the question. Kain shakes his head. He doesn't know either.   
  
“And I wonder who this 'Father' is that they mention,” the communications specialist adds.   
  
“Whoever it is, it sounds like he's the one behind the violence here,” Mustang says. “Maybe the schism is his fault.”  
  
“He probably ordered the fake Cornello to come here in the first place,” Ed adds. “Turn on the mic!” he urges Fuery. “People should hear this.”  
  
Fuery glances at Mustang, who gives him a nod. Kain flips the switch, allowing the overheard conversation to be broadcast over the speakers that cover the whole city.   
  
Mustang imagines he can hear the rumble of consternation and anger rolling through the city.   
  
“Don't worry,” Envy pleads over the radio. “The people here are so easily manipulated.”

* * * *

Ed had expected that once the truth had been revealed, the people of Liore would accept it, and life would return to a kind of normal. It was Mustang who was braced for trouble. The religious infighting that had brought them here didn't cease with Cornello's unmasking. Instead, it ramped up to a new fever pitch.   
  
Ed listens to the broadcasts while chewing on his lower lip, and he looks up at his commanding officer. “This doesn't make any fucking sense,” he complains.   
  
“People fight hard for their beliefs,” Mustang replies. He sounds distracted. He beckons Breda over, and the two of them start discussing possible sanctions against the most violent offenders. He isn't at all sure that the citizens of Liore will accept the authority of the military at all. It's very possible that the fragmented groups who were fighting against each other will unite against the encroachment of any large force Mustang brings in. But still, he can't just sit back and allow the citizens of Liore to tear each other apart.   
  
He sends his reports to East Command, and he waits for orders, yet he knows that General Grumman expects him to do the best he can in the field, and in the field, the conflict is escalating.   
  
Mustang strides out into the city square in full uniform. More than a few of Liore's assembled population recognizes him. Good. He's counting on that.   
  
“The military will move in to restore order,” he assures the men, women, and children gawking at him from behind the makeshift barricades set up by his team to protect him as he gives this speech. Roy knows that Riza is guarding him from behind the scope of a rifle, and he feels reassured by her silent presence from atop a nearby building even as he knows that not even she can see everything. The people here don't trust the military. Roy can't even truly blame them: they are so close to Ishval's border. “There will be a curfew after nightfall, and a zero tolerance policy toward civilians carrying weapons of any kind.”   
  
Most of the citizens of Liore, like the citizens of Amestris generally, didn't hold weapons unless they were members of the military. But they were still capable of doing plenty of damage with common household objects, or even their own fists. Roy will need help from East's troops to make any kind of headway in this town. His little team can't maintain watch over the masses of an entire city, even a small one like Liore.   
  
The people shift restively as Roy makes his proclamations, and then, the riot he'd been fearing ignites, as a rock comes flying at his head. He ducks, and the projectile scatters harmlessly away. But shouts break out and Havoc steps forward to hurry Mustang out of the path of danger.  
  
It's Ed who steps in to quell the riot. He stands in the middle of the street, plants his feet, and claps his hands. A rumbling earthquake rolls under the street, racing out from the point at which he stands and knocking civilians down onto their asses. It takes a minute for them to get their feet under them again, at which point Ed just stands there, fearlessly staring them down.   
  
“You know who I am,” he announces. “We're not here to hurt you. But we _won't_ let this city devolve into chaos! Whether you believed in Cornello's miracles or not, whatever you think about God, you can't possibly think he'd want you slaughtering your neighbors! Hasn't this city seen enough of war?”   
  
Ed shoots Mustang a cautious glance, and the Flame Alchemist gives him a nod.   
  
Some of the people standing nearest to Ed pull back to allow the Fullmetal Alchemist to begin herding them back toward their homes with the help of the rest of Mustang's small team. Seeing this, most of the rest of the crowd begins to disperse. Mustang knows better than to believe that this small victory will last, but he stands surveying the townspeople as they return to their daily lives.   
  
He exhales slowly as Hawkeye slips into place next to him, a quarter of an hour later.

“Troops are moving in,” Hawkeye tells him. Her voice is steady, but the crease between her eyebrows proves that she is worried. “The Fuhrer's own battalion. From Central.”   
  
Mustang raises an eyebrow. He starts walking toward the makeshift command center where he'd left Breda. Hawkeye has to hurry to keep up with him. He corners Breda and snaps out a demand for information. But Breda can only tell him things he already knows, namely that Central taking over, pushing out the Eastern troops, can only be bad news.

Roy drags Breda, Havoc, and Hawkeye out with him to meet the Fuhrer's troops, rolling through the desert in their tanks and transport trucks. One of the trucks swerves to block Mustang's path, allowing him to look Lieutenant Colonel Frank Archer in the eye. Archer is a political rival, a brown-nosing social climber who nevertheless holds an impressive service record. Archer despises Alchemists, and doesn't think Roy deserves the rank he holds. He will try to claim superiority here, and Roy can't let him.   
  
“What in the hell do you think you're doing?” Mustang snarls, stopping just short of the idling jeep.   
  
Archer smirks cruelly. “My troops have been ordered to quell the violence in this region.”  
  
“What violence?!” Roy spits. “There's worse violence in Central City every day!”  
  
“Nevertheless, I have my orders.”  
  
“Whose orders?” Roy asks dangerously. “This is my mission.”  
  
But Archer is already shaking his head. “My orders come from the Fuhrer himself.”  
  
“If you do this, it'll be a bloodbath. It'll be another Ishval! You'll be sparking exactly the situation you're trying to prevent.”  
  
“If you think I'm going to disobey the Fuhrer, you're out of your mind. Get out of my way, Mustang.”  
  
Roy lifts his right hand, holding his fingers in front of him, ready to snap.   
  
Archer shakes his head. “Now, now. We're on the same side. That is, unless you're just another treasonous dog who needs to be put down.”  
  
“Try me,” Roy says, his voice low and dangerous.  
  
Archer refuses to heed the warning.   
  
He nods toward a subordinate who is already holding a gun pointed at Mustang. But before he can fire, Roy snaps his fingers and the gun is consumed by fire, which also burns the woman's hand. She drops the gun and cries out, a haunting scream that reminds Mustang too much of his time in Ishval. He puts out the fire. The woman cradles her hand close against her chest, and glares at Mustang.   
  
His first instinct is to apologize to her, but if she follows Archer willingly, that would be the same thing as admitting weakness.   
  
“Do you really want to do this, Archer?”  
  
“You can't take us all down. You're just as vulnerable to a gunshot as the rest of us.”  
  
Roy nods his agreement with that statement, but he is aware of something that Archer is not: that his team has got the man surrounded.   
  
Breda is gathering intel on the forces under the man's command. Hawkeye and Havoc are ready to shoot, Fuery is listening through a bug in Roy's ear, watching for threats.   
  
Archer's smile twists into an ugly contortion, and he waves his troops forward. Mustang snaps his fingers again, throwing up a wall of fire between them and him and Archer. The flames crackle and throw sparks into the desert wind.   
  
And then, there's the heavy report of a rifle, coming from the roof of the building to their left, and Archer crumples to the ground, his head an explosion of blood, face half torn away. Roy fights the urge to be sick, lets his flame wall fall, and he looks at the soldiers gathered there.   
  
“Are you going to disobey a direct order from a superior officer?” he asks the lieutenant who holds a gun trained on him. And he isn't the only one. The woman with the burned hand shakes her head. Finally, the man lowers the gun.   
  
“But the Fuhrer...” another young man protests.   
  
“The Amestrian Military is meant to serve and protect, to save lives. And I won't let the Fuhrer use me to commit another genocide. What the rest of you do is up to you. But we're supposed to be on the same side.”

He knows that, if it comes to it, his little team will not be able to overpower a full platoon. But he hopes that these men and women, half of whom were too young for Ishval and half of whom are Ishval veterans, will _listen_ to him.   
  
It's the veterans who holster their weapons first. They remember Roy from their previous battlefields, and they trust his leadership. The younger soldiers follow suit, looking at one another nervously.   
  
“What do you want us to do?” the woman with the burned hand asks guardedly.   
  
“We need to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in this city. I have a team working on it.”  
  
“So you want us to... what? Just go home?”  
  
In fact, Roy would like nothing better, but he shakes his head. “Camp close,” he says. “Put a little pressure on this religious leadership. But you do not cross into this town unless _I_ order you to. Do you understand?”  
  
The male lieutenant and the female both nod. “Yes, sir!” the man says, and he snaps a quick salute.   
  
Roy smiles.

* * * *

Ed looks at Mustang, half pleading and half annoyed. The boy seems to believe he's found some way to stop the coming catastrophe, a civilian who claims to have insight into the goals of Archer's faction, though he mistrusts the military and wants to speak to Mustang only. According to Ed, the man called him out by name.   
  
“He knows what's going on!” Ed insists.   
  
Roy finally nods. He keeps his hand on his gun as he follows Ed through a twisted network of alleyways winding through Liore's central market.   
  
And Mustang's jaw drops when he sees the Ishvalan suspect who had killed all those State Alchemists back in Central, months and months ago. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, only half out loud.   
  
The man stops what he's doing and narrows his red eyes, no longer hidden behind the old pair of dark glasses. “The same as you, Flame Alchemist. I'm trying to stop the bloodshed in this city.”   
  
Mustang shivers uncomfortably. He's always hated it when people call him by his title, but coming from an Ishvalan, it sinks in his gut, heavy and painful.   
  
Roy holds his gun level, pointed directly at the Ishvalan's head. The man only smirks. “You made no attempt to kill me the last time we came face to face, alchemist,” he says smoothly.   
  
The man standing before him is one of the most dangerous criminals in Amestris, his image adorns Most Wanted posters in military installations across the nation. But Mustang lowers his gun. “What did you mean?” he asks carefully. “You said you're trying to stop the bloodshed.”  
  
“After the slaughter of my people, I said never again.”  
  
“So did I,” Mustang replies. The honesty bleeds, out there in the open, and the Ishvalan raises an eyebrow. “I know what I did can't be forgiven,” Roy continues. “I just want to help,” he adds lamely.   
  
The Ishvalan beckons him closer, and hands him a folded up piece of paper. When Mustang opens it up, it's suprisingly large, and it turns out to be a large map of Amestris. Roy frowns down at it. What is he supposed to see?   
  
The Ishvalan fumbles around in his pocket until he finds a pen. Black ink pools onto the map as he presses down hard on one particular spot: Liore. Mustang watches quietly as the man moves on to other cities: Fotset, Riviere, Briggs... Last, he marks Ishval. He glances up, trying to read Roy's reaction, but the Flame Alchemist simply frowns in confusion, until the Ishvalan begins to draw in the interconnecting lines. He loops around the border cities, forming a circle, and the lines in between create a pentagon. The shapes resolve into a transmutation circle, stark against the page.   
  
“Holy shit,” Mustang breathes. His stomach twists. “What...?” he stammers. “How...?”   
  
“Central's forces come to carve a Crest of Blood.”  
  
Roy's jaw drops. He stares at Ishval, just a point on the map, and his breathing accelerates as he's quickly forced to remember all that happened there. “You mean someone is doing this on _purpose_?” he manages to choke out.  
  
The Ishvalan nods. “The question you should be asking yourself is why.”   
  
Roy turns back to the map, to the transmutation circle imprinted in dark ink across the familiar landscape. The _human_ transmutation circle. It is much simpler than the one he'd seen sketched onto the floor of the Elric brothers' basement all those years ago, but that doesn't change anything about the horror of its purpose.   
  
“Whoever did this... it's been in motion for centuries. Since the founding of the nation.”  
  
“We have to break the circle,” the Ishvalan says. Break the circle. Break the cycle of violence that is all Amestris has known since its inception.   
  
“How?” Mustang asks.   
  
The Ishvalan nods toward the tattoos adorning his right arm. “I came here seeking for a way to restore life in this place of death,” he says seriously.   
  
“Is that what that does?” Mustang asks. “Bring things to life?”   
  
He holds his breath in hope and wonder, but he knows just as well as Edward Elric does that alchemy can't bring anything back from the dead. It has to be a trick, doesn't it?   
  
But the Ishvalan just holds his attention with a steady gaze, and says simply. “If not for this, I would not have survived the war.”  
  
He doesn't elaborate, and despite his intense curiosity, Mustang doesn't ask him to.   
  
“What do you need me to do?” he asks instead.   
  
The Ishvalan smiles. “We need to change the shape of the land, Amestrian.”  
  
Roy frowns. “How the hell do we do that?”


End file.
